Aunt Louise was opposed to the public school.

Uncle Charlie said he feared Aunt Louise did not appreciate the democratic institutions of her country.

Emmy Lou caught the word—democratic; later she had occasion to consider it further.

Aunt Louise said that Uncle Charlie was quite right in his fear, and the end was that Emmy Lou was started at private school.

But it was not a school—it was only a Parlour; and there being a pupil more than there were accommodations, and Emmy Lou being the new-comer, her portion was a rocking-chair and a lap-board.

There was not even a real teacher, only an old lady who called one “my dear.”

At home Emmy Lou cried with her head buried in Aunt Cordelia’s new bolster sham; for how could she confess to Hattie and to Rosalie that it was a parlour and a lap-board?

Upon consultation, Uncle Charlie said, let her do as she pleased, since damage to her seemed to be inevitable either way. So, Emmy Lou, rejoicing, departed one morning for the Grammar School.

Public school being different from private school, Emmy Lou at once began to learn things. For instance, at Grammar School, one no longer speaks of boys in undertones. One assumes an attitude of having always known boys. At Grammar School, classes attend chapel. There are boys in Chapel, still separated from the girls, to be sure, after the manner of the goats from the sheep; but after one learns to laugh from the corners of one’s eyes at boys, a dividing line of mere aisle is soon abridged. Watching Rosalie, Emmy Lou discovered this.

There was a boy in Chapel whom she knew, but it takes courage to look out of the corners of one’s eyes, and Emmy Lou could only find sufficient to look straight, which is altogether a different thing. But the boy saw her. Emmy Lou looked away quickly.

Once the boy’s name had been Billy; later, at dancing school, it was Willie; now, the Principal who conducted Chapel Exercises called him William.

Emmy Lou liked this Principal. He had white hair, and when it fell into his eyes he would stand it wildly over his head, running his fingers through its thickness; but one did not laugh because of greater interest in what he said.

Emmy Lou asked Rosalie the Principal’s name, but Rosalie was smiling backward at a boy as the classes filed out of Chapel. Afterward she explained that his name was Mr. Page.

At Grammar School Emmy Lou continued to learn things. The pupils of a grammar school abjure school bags; a Geography now being a folio volume measurable in square feet, it is the thing to build upon its basic foundation an edifice of other text-books, and carry the sum total to and fro on an aching arm.

Nor do grammar-school pupils bring lunch; they bring money, and buy lunch—pies, or doughnuts, or pickles—having done with the infant pabulum of primary bread and butter.

Nor does so big a girl as a grammar-school pupil longer confess to any infantile abbreviation of entitlement; she gives her full baptismal name and is written down, as in Emmy Lou’s case, Emily Louise Pope MacLauren, which has its drawbacks; for she sometimes fails to recognise the unaccustomed sound of that name when called unexpectedly from the platform.

For at twelve years, an Emmy Lou finds herself dreaming, and watching the clouds through the school-room windows. The reading lesson concerns one Alnaschar, the Barber’s Fifth Brother; and while the verses go droningly round, the kalsomined blue walls fade, and one wanders the market-place of Bagdad, amid bales of rich stuffs, and trays of golden trinkets and mysteries that trouble not, purveyors and Mussulmen, eunuchs and seraglios, khans, mosques, drachmas—one has no idea what they mean, nor does one care: on every hand in Life lie mysteries, why not in books? The thing is, to seize upon the Story, and to let the other go.

And so Emily Louise fails to answer to the baptismal fulness of her name spoken from the platform, until at a neighbour’s touch she springs up, blushing.

But, somehow, she did not take the reproach in Miss Amanda’s voice to heart; Miss Amanda was given to saying reproachfully, “Please, p-ple-e-ase—young ladies,” many times a day, but after a brief pause one returned to pleasant converse with a neighbour.

Jokes were told about Miss Amanda among the girls, and, gathering at recess about her desk, her pupils would banter Miss Amanda as to who was her favourite, whereupon, she, pleased and flattered, would make long and detailed refutation of any show of partiality.

Miss Amanda pinned a bow in her hair, and wore a chain, and rings, and was given to frequent patting and pushing of her hair into shape; was it possible Miss Amanda felt herself to be—pretty?

Ordinarily, however, Emily Louise did not think much about her one way or another, except at those times when Miss Amanda tried to be funny; then she quite hated her with unreasoning fierceness.

Right now Miss Amanda was desiring Emily Louise MacLauren to give attention.

Once a week there was public recitation in the Chapel. Mr. Page considered it good for boys and girls to work together, which was a new way of regarding it peculiar to grammar school, for hitherto, boys, like the skull and cross-bones bottles in Aunt Cordelia’s closet, had been things to be avoided.

“To-morrow,” Miss Amanda was explaining, “the chapel recitation will be in grammar; you will conjugate,” Miss Amanda simpered, “the verb—to love,” with playful meaning in her emphasis; “but I need have no fear, young ladies,” archly, “that you will let yourselves be beaten at this lesson.”

Miss Amanda meant to be funny. Emily Louise, for one, looked stonily ahead; not for anything would she smile.

But the weekly recitation varied, and there came a week when the classes were assembled for a lesson in composition.

Mr. Page laughed at what he called flowery effusions. “Use the matter and life about you,” he said.

“There is one boy,” he went on to state, “whose compositions are generally good for that reason. William, step up, sir, and let us hear what you have made of this.”

William arose. He was still square, but he was no longer short; there was a straight and handsome bridge building to his nose, and he had taken to tall collars. William’s face was somewhat suffused at this summons to publicity, but his smile was cheerful and unabashed. His composition was on “Conscience.” So were the compositions of the others; but his was different.

“A boy has one kind of a conscience,” read William, “and a girl has another kind. Two girls met a cow. ‘Look her right in the face and pretend like we aren’t afraid,’ said the biggest girl; but the littlest girl had a conscience. ‘Won’t it be deceiving the cow?’ she wanted to know.”

Emily Louise blushed; how could William! For Emily Louise was “the littlest girl;” Hattie was the other, and William had come along and driven the cow away.

William was still reading: “There was a girl found a quarter in the snow. She thought how it would buy five pies, or ten doughnuts, or fifteen pickles, and then she thought about the person who would come back and find the place in the snow and no quarter, and so she went and put the quarter back.”

How could William! Mr. Page, his hair wildly rumpled, was clapping hand to knee; even the teachers were trying not to smile. Emily Louise blushed hotter, for Emily Louise, taking the quarter back, had met William.

“Boys are different,” stated William’s composition. “There was a boy went to the office to be whipped. The strap hit a stone in his pocket. So the Principal, who went around on Saturdays with a hammer tapping rocks, let the boy off. He didn’t know the boy got the rock out the alley on purpose. But I reckon boys have some kind of a conscience. That boy felt sort of mean.”

It was the teachers who were laughing now, while Mr. Page, running his fingers through his hair, wore a smile—arrested, reflective, considering. But it broadened; there are Principals, here and there, who can appreciate a William.

There was other proof that William liked her. At grammar school it was the proper thing to own an autograph album. William’s page in the album of Emily Louise was a triumph in purple ink upon a pinkish background. Not that William had written it. Jimmy Reed had written it for him. Jimmy wielded a master pen in flourish and shading, upon which he put a price accordingly. A mere name cost the patrons of Jimmy a pickle, while a pledge to eternal friendship or sincerity was valued at a doughnut. For the feelings in verse, one paid a pie.

William had paid a pie, and his sentiments at maximum price thus set forth declared:

“True friendship is a golden knot
   Which angles’ hands have tied,
By heavenly skill its textures wrought
   Who shall its folds divide?”

Emily Louise wondered about the “angles hands.” What were they? It never suggested itself that a master of the pen such as Jimmy might be weak in spelling.

One has to meet new responsibilities at grammar school, too; one has to be careful with whom she associates.

Associate was Isobel’s word; she used many impressive words, but then Isobel was different; she spelled her name with an o, and she did not live in a home; Isobel lived in a hotel, and her papa was the holder of a government position. Hattie’s papa, someone told Emily Louise, had wanted to hold it, but Isobel’s papa got it.

Isobel said a person must discriminate. This Emily Louise found meant, move in groups that talked each about the others. Isobel and Rosalie pointed out to Emily Louise that the nice girls were in their group.

Yet Hattie was not in it; Emily Louise wondered why.

“It depends on who you are,” said Isobel, with the sweeping calmness of one whose position is assured. “My papa is own second cousin to the Attorney-General of the United States.”

And that this claim conveyed small meaning to the group about Isobel, made her family connections by no means the less impressive and to be envied. The Isobels supply their part of the curriculum of grammar school.

Emily Louise went home anxious. “Have I a family?” she inquired.

“It’s hard to say, since you abandoned it,” said Uncle Charlie.

Emily Louise blushed; she did not feel just happy in her mind yet about those dolls buried in a mausoleum-like trunk in the attic.

She explained: the kind of family that has a tree? Did she belong to a family? Had she a tree?

“The only copper beech in town,” said Uncle Charlie.

But Aunt Cordelia’s vulnerable spot was touched; she grew quite heated. Emily Louise learned that she was a Pringle and a Pope.

“And a MacLauren?” queried Emily Louise.

But Aunt Cordelia’s enthusiasm had cooled.

There came a time when Emily Louise divined why. All at once talk began at school, about a thing looming ahead, called an Election. It seemed a disturbing thing, keeping Uncle Charlie at the office all hours. And when in time it actually arrived, Emily Louise could not go to school that day because the way would take her past the Polls, yet ordinarily this was only the grocery; but so dreadful a place is it when it becomes a poll, that Aunt Cordelia could not go to it for her marketing.

Hitherto, except when Miss Amanda wanted to be funny, Emily Louise had felt her to be inoffensive; but as election became the absorbing topic of Grammar School, a dreadful thing came to light—Miss Amanda was a Republican.

Hattie told Emily Louise; her voice was low and full of horror. For Hattie reflected the spirit of her State and age; the State was in the South, the year was preceding the ’80’s.

Emily Louise lowered her voice, too; it was to ask just what is a Republican. She was conscious of a vagueness.

Hattie looked at her, amazed. “A Republican—why—people who are not Democrats—of course.”

“How does one know which one is?” asked Emily Louise, feeling that it would be disconcerting, considering public opinion, to find herself a Republican.

Hattie looked tried. “You’re what your father is, naturally. I should think you’d know that, Emily Louise.”

On the way from school William joined Emily Louise.

“What’s a Republican, William?” she asked.

His countenance changed. “It’s—well—it’s the sort you don’t want to have anything to do with,” said William, darkly.

Emily Louise, knowing how William regarded her conscientiousness, was uneasy because of a certain recollection. She must get to the bottom of this. She sought Aunt Louise privately. “Aren’t you a Democrat?” she inquired.

The indignant response of Aunt Louise was disconcerting. “What else could you dream I am?” she demanded with asperity.

“You said you didn’t approve of Democratic Institutions,” explained Emily Louise, recalling.

“I approve of nothing under Republican domination,” said Aunt Louise haughtily—which was muddling.

“What’s Papa?” asked Emily Louise, suddenly.

Aunt Louise, dressing for a party, shut her door sharply.

One could ask Aunt Cordelia. But Aunt Cordelia turned testy, and even told Emily Louise to run away.

Uncle Charlie was gone.

There was Aunt M’randa and Tom, so Emily Louise sought the kitchen. It was after supper. Tom was spelling the news from a paper spread on the table, and Aunt M’randa was making up the flannel cakes for breakfast.

“Who? Yo’ paw?” said Tom; “he’s a Republican; he done edit that kinder paper over ’cross the Ohier River, he does.”

There was unction in the glib quickness of Tom’s reply. Then he dodged; it was just in time.

“Shet yo’ mouf,” said Aunt M’randa with wrath; “ain’t I done tol’ how they’ve kep’ it from the chile.”

Emily Louise was swallowing hard. “Then—then—am I a Republican?” Her voice sounded way off.

Aunt M’randa turned a scandalised face upon her last baby in the family. “Co’se yer ain’t chile; huccome yer think sech er thing? Ain’t yer done learned its sinnahs is lumped wi’ ’publicans—po’ whites, an’ cul’d folks an’ sech?”

The comfort in Aunt M’randa’s reassuring was questionable. “But—you said—my papa—” said Emily Louise.

The tension demanded relief. Aunt M’randa turned on Tom. “I lay I bus’ yo’ haid open ef yer don’t quit yo’ stan’in’ wi’ yer mouf gapin’ at the trouble yer done made.”

Aunt M’randa was sparring for time.

“Don’ yer worry ’bout dat, honey”—this to Emily Louise—“hit’s jes’ one dese here mistakes in jogaphy, seem like, same es yer tell erbout gettin’ kep’ in foh. Huccome a gen’man like yo’ paw, got bawn y’other side de Ohier River, ’ceptin’ was an acci-dent? Dess tell me dat? But dere’s ’nough quality dis here side de fam’ly to keep yer a good Dem’crat, honey—” and Aunt M’randa, muttering, glared at Tom.

For Emily Louise was gazing into a gulf wider than the river rolling between home—and papa, a gulf called war; nor did Emily Louise know, as Aunt M’randa knew, that it was a baby’s little fists clutching at Aunt Cordelia that had bridged that gulf.

Emily Louise turned away—her papa was that thing for lowered voice and bated breath—her papa—was a Republican.

Then Emily Louise was a Republican also. Hattie said so; Aunt M’randa did not know. At twelve one begins determinedly to face facts.

Yet the very next day Emily Louise made discovery that a greater than her papa had been that thing for lowered tones. She was working upon her weekly composition, and this week the subject was “George Washington.”

Emily Louise had just set forth upon legal cap her opening conclusions upon the matter. She had gone deep into the family annals of George, for, by nature, Emily Louise was thorough, and William had testified that she was conscientious.

“George Washington was a great man and so was his mother.”

Here she paused, pen suspended; for the full meaning of a statement in the history spread before her had suddenly dawned upon her; for that history declared George Washington “a firm advocate for these republican principles.”

Should an Emily Louise then turn traitor to her father, or should she desert an Aunt Cordelia and an Aunt Louise?

Life is complex. At twelve a pucker of absorption and concentration begins to gather between the brows.

On the homeward way, William was waiting at the corner. “What is a person when they are not either Democrat or Republican?” Emily Louise asked as they went along.

William’s tones were uncompromising. “A mugwump,” he said, and he said it with contempt.

It sounded unpleasant, and as though it ought to merit the contempt of William.

And grammar was becoming as complex as life itself. One forenoon Emily Louise was called upon to recite the rule. Every day it was a different rule, which in itself was discouraging. But the exceptions were worse than the rule; for a rule is a matter of a mere paragraph, while the exceptions are measurable by pages.

But Emily Louise knew the rule. Even with town one background for flag and bunting; even with the streets one festive processional; even with the advent, in her city, of the President of the United States on his tour of the South; even with this in her civic precincts, Emily Louise, arising, was able correctly to recite the rule.

“An article should only be used once before a complex description of one and the same object.”

“An example,” said Miss Amanda.

Emily Louise stood perplexed, for none had been given in the book.

“Simply apply the rule and make your own,” said Miss Amanda.

But it did not seem simple; Emily Louise was still thinking in the concrete.

Hattie had grasped abstractions. Hattie waved her hand. There was a scarlet spot upon her cheek. Before school there had been words between Hattie and Isobel. The politics of the President of the United States had figured in it, and Emily Louise had learned that the President was a Republican. And yet flags! And processions!

Miss Amanda said, “Well, Hattie?”

Hattie arose. “There is a single, only, solitary Republican pupil in this class,” said she promptly and with emphasis.

Miss Amanda might proceed to consider the proposition grammatically, her mind being on the rule, and not the import, but the class interpreted it as Hattie meant they should. In their midst! And unsuspected!

Emily Louise grew hot. Could Hattie, would Hattie, do this thing? Hattie, accuse her thus? Yet who else could Hattie mean? The heart of Emily Louise swelled—Hattie to do this thing!

And Hattie was wrong. She should know that she was wrong. She should read it in her own autograph album, just brought to Emily Louise for her inscribing. Emily Louise remained in at recess. Verse was beyond her. She recognised her limitations. Some are born to prose and some to higher things. She applied herself to a plain statement in Hattie’s album:

Dear Hattie:

I am a Mugwump and your true friend.

Emily Louise MacLauren

Then she put the book on Hattie’s desk as the bell rang.

With the class came a visible and audible excitement. Mr. Page followed, his hair wildly erect, and he conversed with Miss Amanda hurriedly.

With visual signalling and labial dumb show, Emily Louise implored enlightenment.

“Ours is the honour class, so we’re to be chosen,” enunciated Hattie, in a staccato whisper.

Rosalie was nearer. “There’s to be a presentation—in the Chapel,” whispered Rosalie; “sh-h—he’s going to choose us—now——”

Mr. Page and Miss Amanda were surveying the class. Some two score pairs of eager eyes sought each to stay those glances upon themselves. Perhaps Mr. Page lacked courage.

“The choice I leave to you,” said he to Miss Amanda. Then he went.

Miss Amanda was also visibly excited. She settled her chain and puffed the elaborate coiffure of her hair, the while she continued to survey the class. She looked hesitant and undecided, glancing from row to row; then, as from some inspiration, her face cleared and she grew arch, shaking a finger playfully. “To the victors belong the spoils,” she said with sprightly humour, “and it will, at least, narrow the choice. I will ask those young ladies whose fathers chance to be of a Republican way of thinking to please arise.”

A silence followed—a silence of disappointment to the many; then Emily Louise MacLauren arose.

Was retribution following thus fast because of that subterfuge of Mugwump? Alas for that conscientiousness of which she had once been proud! Was it the measure of her degradation she read on Rosalie’s startled face—Rosalie’s face of stricken incredulity and amaze? But no; Rosalie’s transfixed gaze was not on Emily Louise—it passed her, to——

To where in the aisle beyond stood another—Isobel.

But the head of Isobel was erect, and her eyes flashed triumph; the throw of Isobel’s shoulders flung defiance back in the moment of being chosen.

Excitement quivered the voice of Miss Amanda’s announcement. “The wife of the President of the United States, young ladies, having signified her intention of to-day visiting our school, the young ladies standing will report to the office at once, to receive instructions as to their part in the programme; though first, perhaps”—did Miss Amanda read sex through self—“a little smoothing of hair—and ribbons——”

Emily Louise on this day carried her news home doubtfully, for Aunt Louise and Aunt Cordelia were of such violent Democracy.

“You were chosen”—Aunt Louise repeated—“Isobel, to make the speech and you to present the flowers?” Aunt Louisa’s face was alight with excitement and inquiry. “And what did you do, Emmy Lou?”

“I gave them to her up on the platform; it was a pyramid in a lace paper—the bouquet.”

“And then?” Aunt Louise was breathless with attention.

“She kissed me,” said Emily Louise, “on the cheek.”

Aunt Louise gave a little laugh of gratification and pride. “The wife of the President—why, Emmy Lou——”

“I’ll write to her Aunt Katie this very afternoon,” said Aunt Cordelia.

“Better look to the family tree,” said Uncle Charlie. “There’s danger of too rich soil in these public honours.”

But, instead, Emily Louise went out and sat on the side-door step; she needed solitude for the readjustment of her ideas.

Aunt Cordelia was pleased, and Aunt Louise was proud.

And Emily Louise, with the kiss of Republicanism upon her cheek, had stepped down from the Chapel platform into ovation and adulation, to find herself the centre of a homeward group jostling for place beside her. Hattie had carried her books, Rosalie her jacket. William had nodded to her at one corner, to be waiting at the next, where he nodded again with an incidental carelessness of manner, and joined the group. Emily Louise had stolen a glance at William, anxiously. Had William’s opinion of her fallen? It would seem not.

Yet Isobel had gone home alone. Emily Louise had seen her starting, with sidewise glance and lingering saunter should any be meaning to overtake her. But she had gone on alone.

“Because she never told,” said Hattie.

“Until she wanted to be chosen,” said Rosalie.

“But I never told,” said Emily Louise.

Hattie was final. “It’s different,” said Hattie.

“Oh, very,” said Rosalie.

They travel through labyrinthian paths who seek for understanding.

The sun went down; the dusk grew chill. Emily Louise sat on the door-step, chin in palm.

Double names are childish things; therefore Emmy Lou entered the high school as Emily MacLauren.

Her disapproval of the arrangements she found there was decided. High-school pupils have no abiding place, but are nomadic in their habits and enforced wanderers between shrines of learning, changing quarters as well as teachers for every recitation; and the constant readjustment of mood to meet the varied temperaments of successive teachers is wearing on the temper.

Yet there is a law in the high school superior to that of the teacher. At the dictates of a gong, classes arise in the face of a teacher’s incompleted peroration and depart. As for the pupils, there is no rest for the soles of their feet; a freshman in the high school is a mere abecedarian part of an ever-moving line, which toils, weighted with pounds of text-books, up and down the stairways of knowledge, climbing to the mansard heights for rhetoric, to descend, past doors to which it must later return, to the foundation floor for Ancient History.

Looking back at the undulating line winding in dizzy spiral about the stairways, Emily, at times, seemed to herself to be a vertebrate part of some long, forever-uncoiling monster, one of those prehistoric, seen-before-in-dreams affairs. She chose her figures knowingly, for she was studying zoology now.

Classes went to the laboratory for this subject, filing into an amphitheatre of benches about Miss Carmichael, who stood in the centre of things and wasted no time; she even clipped her words, perhaps that they might not impede each other in their flow, which lent a disconcerting curtness of enunciation to an amazing rapidity of the same. Indeed, Miss Carmichael talked so fast that Emily got but a blurred impression of her surroundings, carrying away a dazed consciousness that the contents of certain jars to the right and left of the lady were amphibian in their nature, and that certain other objects in skin leering down from dusty shelves were there because of saurian claims. And because man is a vertebrate, having an internal, jointed, bony skeleton, man stood in a glass case behind the oracular priestess of the place, in awful, articulated, bony whole, from which the newly initiated had constantly to drag their fascinated, shuddering gaze. Not that Emily wanted to look, indeed she had no time to be looking, needing it all to keep up with Miss Carmichael, discoursing in unpunctuated, polysyllablic flow of things batrachian and things reptilian, which, like the syllables falling from the lips of the wicked daughter in the story-book, proved later to be toads and lizards.

Miss Carmichael was short and square, and her nose was large. She rubbed it with her knuckle like a man. She had rubbed it one day as she looked at Emily, whom she had called upon as “the girl who answers to the name of MacLauren.”

It was not a flattering way to be designated, but freshmen learn to be grateful for any identity. Then, too, Miss Carmichael was famed for her wit, and much is to be overlooked in a wit which in another might seem to be bad manners. Once Emily had been hazy about the word wit, but now she knew. If you understand at once it is not wit; but if, as you begin to understand, you find you don’t, that is apt to be wit. Miss Carmichael was famed for hers.

Thus called upon, the girl who answered to the name of MacLauren stood up. The lecture under discussion was concerned with a matter called perpetuation of type. Under fire of questions it developed that the pupil in hand was sadly muddled over it.

Under such circumstances, it was a way with Miss Carmichael to play with the pupil’s mystification. “‘Be a kitten and cry mew,’” said she, her eyes snapping with the humour of it. “Why mew and not baa? Why does the family of cow continue to wear horns?”

Why, indeed? There wasn’t any sense. Emily felt wild. Miss Carmichael here evidently decided it was time to temper glee with something else. Emily was prepared for that, having discovered that wit is uncertain in its humours.

“An organ not exercised loses power to perform its function. Think!” said Miss Carmichael. “Haven’t you taken down the lecture?”

Emily had taken down the lecture, but she had not taken in the lecture. She looked unhappy. “I don’t think I understand it,” she confessed.

“Then why didn’t you have it explained?”

“I did try.” Which was true, for Emily had gone with questions concerning perpetuation of type to her Aunt Cordelia.

“What did you want to know?” demanded Miss Carmichael.

“About—about the questions at the end for us to answer—about that one, ‘What makes types repeat themselves?’”

“And what does?” said Miss Carmichael. “That is exactly what I’m trying to find out.”

Emily looked embarrassed. Aunt Cordelia’s answer was the same one that she gave to all the puzzling whys, but Emily did not want to give it here.

“Come, come, come,” said Miss Carmichael. She was standing by her table, and she rapped it sharply, “And what does?”

“God,” said Emily desperately.

She felt the general embarrassment as she sat down. She felt Hattie give a quick look at her, then saw her glance around. Was it for her? Hattie’s cheek was red. Rosalie, with her cheek crimson, was looking in her lap.

In the High School some have passed out of Eden, while others are only approaching the fruit of the tree.

Hattie had glanced at her protectingly, and though Emily did not understand just why, she was glad, for of late she had been feeling apart from Hattie and estranged from Rosalie, and altogether alone and aggrieved.

Hattie now wrote herself Harriet, and had seemed to change in the process, though Emily, who had once been Emily Louise herself, felt she had not changed to her friends. But Hattie was one to look facts in the face. “If you’re not pretty,” she had a while back confided to Emily, “you’ve got to be smart.” And forthwith taking to learning, Hattie was fast becoming a shining light.

Rosalie had taken to things of a different nature, which she called Romantic Situations. To have the wind whisk off your hat and take it skurrying up the street just as you meet a boy is a Romantic Situation.

Emmy Lou had no sympathy with them, whatever; it even embarrassed her to hear about them and caused her to avoid Rosalie’s eye. Perhaps Rosalie divined this, for she took to another thing—and that was Pauline. With arms about each other, the two walked around the basement promenade at recess, while Emily stood afar off and felt aggrieved.

She was doing a good deal of feeling these days, but principally she felt cross. For one thing, she was having to wear a sailor suit in which she hated herself. It takes a jaunty juvenility of spirit to wear a sailor suit properly, and she was not feeling that way these days. She was feeling tall and conscious of her angles. The tears, too, came easily, as at thought of herself deserted by Hattie and Rosalie, or at sight of herself in the sailor suit. It was in Aunt Cordelia’s Mirror that she viewed herself with such dissatisfaction; but while looking, the especial grievance was forgotten by reason of her gaze centring upon the reflected face. She was wondering if she was pretty. But even while her cheek flamed with the thinking of it, she forgot why the cheek was hot in the absorption of watching it fade, until—eyes met eyes——

She turned quickly and hid her face against the sofa. Emmy Lou had met Self.

But later she almost quarrelled with Aunt Cordelia about the sailor suit.

One day at recess a new-comer who had entered late was standing around. Her cheek was pale, though her eager look about lent a light to her face. But all seemed paired off and absorbed and the eager look faded. Emily, whom she had not seen, moved nearer, and the new-comer’s face brightened. “They give long recesses,” she said.

“Yes,” she said, “they do”; and the next day another pair, Emily and the new-comer, joined the promenade about the basement.

The new pupil’s name was Margaret; that is, since it stopped being Maggie. Emily confessed to having once been Emmy herself, with a middle name of Lou besides, and after that they told each other everything. Margaret loved to read and had lately come to own a certain book which she brought to lend Emily, and over its pages they drew together. The book was called “Percy’s Reliques.”

Beside the common way lies the Ballad Age, but Emily would have passed, unknowing, had not Margaret, drawing the branches aside, revealed it; and into the sylvan glades she stepped, pipes and tabret luring, with life and self at once in tune.

And then Margaret told her something, “if she would never, never tell”—Margaret wrote things herself.

It was about this time that Rosalie was moved to seek Emily, as of old, to relate a Romantic Situation. She warned her that it would be sad, but Emily did not mind that. She loved sad things these days, and even found an exultation in them if they were very, very sad.

Rosalie took her aside to tell it: “There was a bride, ready, even to her veil, and he, the bridegroom, never came—he was dead.”

Rosalie called this a Romantic Situation. Emily admitted it, feeling, however, that it was more, though she could not tell Rosalie that. It—it was like the poetry in the book, only poetry would not have left it there!

“O mither, mither mak my bed
O mak it saft and narrow;
Since my love died for me to-day,
Ise die for him to-morrowe.”

“It’s about a teacher right here in the High School,” Rosalie went on to tell.

Then it was true. “Which one?” asked Emily.

But that Rosalie did not know.

It was like poetry. But then life was all turning to poetry now. One climbed the stairs to the mansard now with winged feet, for Rhetoric is concerned with metaphor and simile, and Rhetoric treats of rhyme. There is a sudden meaning in Learning since it leads to a desired end.

Poetry is everywhere around. The prose light of common day is breaking into prismatic rays. Into the dusty highway of Ancient History all at once sweeps the pageantry of Mythology. Philemon bends above old Baucis at the High School gate, though hitherto they have been sycamores. Olympus is just beyond the clouds. The Elysian Fields lie only the surrender of the will away, if one but droops, with absent eye, head propped on hand, and dreams——

But Emily, all at once, is conscious that Miss Beaton’s eyes are on her, at which she moves suddenly and looks up. But this mild-eyed teacher with the sweet, strong smile is but gazing absently down on her the while she talks.

Emily likes Miss Beaton, the teacher of History. Her skirts trail softly and her hair is ruddy where it is not brown; she forgets, and when she rises her handkerchief is always fluttering to the floor. Emily loves to be the one to jump and pick it up. Miss Beaton’s handkerchiefs are fine and faintly sweet and softly crumpled, and Emily loves the smile when Miss Beaton’s absent gaze comes back and finds her waiting.