Chapter IV: Part 4

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 _la_dies," 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.

The cheek of Emily Louise might be hot, but in her heart was a newer feeling; was it pleasure? Something, somewhere, was telling Emily Louise that William liked her the better for these things he was laughing at. Was she pleased thereat? Never. Her cheek grew hotter. Yet the pleasurable sensation was there. Suddenly she understood. It was because of this tribute to the condition of her conscience. Of course it would be perfectly proper, therefore, to determine to keep up this reputation with 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.

A BALLAD IN PRINT O' LIFE

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.

Emily felt drawn to her, for since being deserted she was not enjoying recesses herself.

"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.

But to-day, what is this she is saying? Who is the beautiful youth she is telling about? Adonis? Beloved, did she say, and wounded? Wounded unto death, but loved and never forgotten, and from whose blood sprang the windswept petals of anemone----

Miss Beaton's gaze comes back to her school-room and she takes up the book. The story is told.

Emily had not known that her eyes had filled--tears come so unlooked-for these days--until the ring on Miss Beaton's hand glistened and the facets of its jewel broke into gleams.

She caught her breath, she sat up suddenly, for she knew--all at once she knew--it was Miss Beaton who had been the bride, and the ring was the sign.

She loved Miss Beaton with a sudden rapture, and henceforth gazed upon her with secret adoration. She made excuses to consult books in Miss Beaton's room, that she might be near her; she dreamed, and the sweetness and the sadness of it centred about Miss Beaton.

She told Rosalie. "Why, of course, I guessed her right at first," said Rosalie; but she said it jealously, for she, too, was secretly adoring Miss Beaton.

Emily had been trying to ask Margaret something, but each time the question stuck in her throat. Now she gathered courage.

It was spring, and the High School populace turned out at recess to promenade the yard. On the third round about the gravel, in the farthest corner where a lilac bush topping the fence from next door lent a sort of screen and privacy, Emily caught Margaret by the arm and held her back. After that there was no retreat; she had to speak.

"How--how do you do it?" she asked.

"What?" asked Margaret.

"Write?" said Emily, holding to Margaret tight--she had never before thus laid bare the secrets of her soul.

"Oh," said Margaret, and her lips parted and her face lighted as she and Emily gazed into each other's eyes, "you just feel it and then you write."

There was a time when Emily would have asked, "Feel what?" "It" as used by Margaret was indefinite, but Emily understood. You just feel it and then you write.

In her study hour Emily took her pencil and, with Latin Grammar as barrier and blind to an outside world, bent over her paper. She did not speak them, those whispers hunting the rhyme: she only felt them, and they spoke.

She did not know, she did not dream that she was finding the use, the purpose for it all, these years of the climb toward knowledge. Some day it would dawn on her that we only garner to give out.

_Creare--creatum_, she had repeated in class from her Latin Grammar, but she did not understand the meaning then. In the beginning God made, and Man is in the image of God. She had found the answer to her discontent; for to create, to give out, is the law.

She wrote on, head bent, cheek flushed, leaning absorbed above the paper in her book.

On the way home she whispered that which had written itself, while her feet kept time to the rhythm. It was Beautiful and Sad, and it was True:

"The bride and her maidens sat in her bower----"

She nodded to William loitering near the High School gate, and hurried on. She did not want company just now:

"And they 'broidered a snow-white veil,
And their laughter was sweet as the orange flower
That breathed on the soft south gale."

But here William caught up with her. She had thought he would take the hint, but he didn't, going with her to her very gate. But once inside, she drew a long breath. The cherry buds were swelling and the sky was blue. She took up her verse where William had interrupted:

"The bride and her maidens sit in her bower,
And they stitch at a winding-sheet;
And they weep as the breath of the orange flower----"

Emily is so absorbed at the dinner-table that Aunt Cordelia is moved to argue about it. She sha'n't go to school if she does not eat her dinner when she gets home. "And that beautiful slice of good roast beef untouched," says Aunt Cordelia.

Emily frowned, being intent on that last line, which is not written yet. She is hunting the rhyme for winding-sheet.

What is this Aunt Cordelia is saying? "Eat--meat----"

How _can_ Aunt Cordelia?--it throws one off--it upsets one.

Hattie chanced to be criticising Miss Beaton the next day, saying that she required too little of her classes. "But then she is more concerned getting ready to be married, I reckon," said Hattie.

"Oh," said Emily, "Hattie!" She was shocked, almost hurt, with Hattie. "Don't you know about it?" she went on to explain. "She was going to be married and--he--he never came--he was dead."

"No such thing," said Hattie. "He runs a feed store next my father's office. We've got cards. It's the day after school's out."

"Then--which--" asked Emily falteringly.

"Why, I heard that the first of the year," said Hattie. "It was Miss Carmichael that happened to."

Emily went off to herself. She felt bitter and cross and disposed to blame Miss Beaton. She never wanted to see or to hear of Miss Beaton again.

Upstairs she took from her Latin Grammar a pencilled paper, interlined and much erased, and tore it into bits--viciously little bits. Then she went and put them in the waste-paper basket.

"You just feel it and then you write," Margaret had said, and Emily was feeling again, and deeply; later she wrote.

It was gloomy, that which wrote itself on the paper, nor did it especially apply to the case in point, "but then," she reminded herself, bitterly recalling the faithlessness of Hattie, of Rosalie, of Miss Beaton, "it's True."

She took it to Hattie from some feeling that she was mixed up in this thing. Hattie closed her Algebra, keeping her finger in the place, while she took the paper and looked at it. She did not seem impressed or otherwise, but read it aloud in a matter-of-fact tone:

"A flower sprang from the earth one day
And nodded and blew in a blithesome way,
And the warm sun filled its cup!
A careless hand broke it off and threw
It idly down where it lately grew,
And the same sun withered it up."

"'Up,'" said Hattie, "what's the up for? You don't need it."

"It's--it's for the rhyme," said Emily.

"It's redundancy," said Hattie.

VENUS OR MINERVA?

It was gratifying to be attached to a name again. As a Freshman, personality had been lost in the High School by reason of overwhelming numbers. The under-world seems always to be over-populated and valued accordingly. But progress in the High School, by rigorous enforcement of the survival of the fittest, brings ultimately a chance for identity. Emmy Lou, a survivor, found a personality awaiting her in her Sophomore year. Henceforth she was to be Miss MacLauren.

The year brought further distinction. Along in the term Miss MacLauren received notification that she had been elected to membership in the Platonian Society.

"On account of recognised literary qualifications," the note set forth.

Miss MacLauren read the note with blushes, and because of the secret joy its perusal afforded, she re-read it in private many times more. The first-fruits of fame are sweet; and as an Athenian might have regarded an invitation into Olympus, so Miss MacLauren looked upon this opening into Platonia.

As a Freshman, on Friday afternoons, she had noted certain of the upper pupils strolling about the building after dismissal, clothed, in lieu of hats and jackets, with large importance. She had learned that they were Platonians, and from the out-courts of the un-elect she had watched them, in pairs and groups, mount the stairs with laughter and chatter and covert backward glances. She did not wonder, she would have glanced backward, too, for wherein lies the satisfaction of being elect, but in a knowledge of the envy of those less privileged?

And mounting the stairs to the mansard, their door had shut upon the Platonians; it was a secret society.

And now this door stood open to Miss MacLauren.

She took her note to Hattie and to Rosalie, who showed a polite but somewhat forced interest.

"Of course if you have time for that sort of thing," said Hattie.

"As if there was not enough of school and learning, now, Emily," said Rosalie.

Miss MacLauren felt disconcerted, the bubble of her elation seemed pricked, until she began to think about it. Hattie and Rosalie were not asked to become Platonians; did they make light of the honour because it was not their honour?

Each seeks to be victor in some Field of Achievement, but each is jealous of the other's Field. Hattie thought Rosalie frivolous, and Rosalie scribbled notes under the nose of Hattie's brilliant recitations. Miss MacLauren, on the neutral ground of a non-combatant, was expected by each to furnish the admiration and applause.

Hattie's was the Field of Learning, and she stood, with obstacles trod under heel, crowned with honours. Hattie meant to be valedictorian some day, nor did Miss MacLauren doubt Hattie would be.

Rosalie's was a different Field. Hers was strewn with victims; victims whose names were Boys.

It was Rosalie's Field, Miss MacLauren, in her heart, longed to enter. But how did Rosalie do it? She raised her eyes and lowered them, and the victims fell. But everyone could not be a Rosalie.

And Hattie looked pityingly upon Rosalie's way of life, and Rosalie laughed lightly at Hattie.

Miss MacLauren admired Hattie, but, secretly, she envied Rosalie. If she had known how, she herself would have much preferred Boys to Brains; one is only a Minerva as second choice.

To be sure there was William. Oh, William! He is taken for granted, and besides, Miss MacLauren is becoming sensitive because there was no one but William.

The next day she was approached by Hattie and Rosalie, who each had a note. They mentioned it casually, but Hattie's tone had a ring. Was it satisfaction? And Rosalie's laugh was touched with gratification, for the notes were official, inviting them, too, to become Platonians.

"Thinking it over," said Hattie, "I'll join; one owes something to class-spirit."

"It's so alluring--the sound," said Rosalie. "A secret anything."

Miss MacLauren, thinking it over, herself, after she reached home that day, suddenly laughed.

It was at dinner. Uncle Charlie looked up at his niece, whom he knew as Emmy Lou, not, as yet, having met Miss MacLauren. He had heard her laugh before, but not just that way; generally she had laughed because other people laughed. Now she seemed to be doing it of herself. There is a difference.

Emmy Lou was thinking of the changed point of view of Hattie and Rosalie, "It's--it's funny--" she explained, in answer to Uncle Charlie's look.

"No!" said Uncle Charlie. "And you see it? Well!"

What on earth was Uncle Charlie talking about?

"I congratulate you," he continued. "It will never be so hard again."

"What?" asked Emmy Lou.

"Anything," said Uncle Charlie.

What was he talking about?

"A sense of humour," said Uncle Charlie, as though one had spoken.

Emma Lou smiled absently. Some of Uncle Charlie's joking which she was used to accepting as mystifying.

But it was funny about Rosalie and Hattie; she was smiling again, and she felt patronisingly superior to them both.

Miss MacLauren was still feeling her superiority as she went to school the next morning. It made her pleased with herself. It was a frosty morning; she drew long breaths, she felt buoyant, and scarcely conscious of the pavements under her feet.

At the corner she met William with another boy. She knew this other boy, but that was all; he had never shown any disposition to have her know him better. But this morning things were different. William and the other boy joined her, William taking her books, while they all walked along together.

Miss MacLauren felt the boy take a sidewise look at her. Something told her she was looking well, and an intuitive consciousness that the boy, stealing a look at her, thought so too, made Miss MacLauren look better.

Her spirits soared intoxicatingly. This was a new sensation. Miss MacLauren did not know herself, the sound of her gay chatting and laughter was strange in her ears. Perhaps it was an unexpected revelation to the others, too. William was not looking pleased, but the other boy was looking at her.

Something made Miss MacLauren feel daring. She looked up--suddenly--at the other boy--square. To be sure, she looked down quicker, that part being involuntary, as well as the blush that followed. The blush was disconcerting, but the sensation, on the whole, was pleasurable.

At the High School gate, Miss MacLauren raised her eyes again. The lowering and the blush could be counted on; the only hard part was to get them raised.

She was blushing as she turned to go in, she was laughing, too, to hide the blush. And this was the Elixir of which Rosalie drank; it mounted to the brain. Intuitively, Miss MacLauren knew, if she could, she would drink of it again. She looked backward over her shoulder; the boy was looking backward, too. Hattie had said that Rosalie was frivolous, that her head was turned; no wonder her head was turned.

The next Friday, the three newly elect mounted the stairs to the Platonian doorway.

Lofty altitudes are expected to be chilly, and the elevation of the mansard was as nothing to the mental heights upon which Platonia was established. Platonian welcome had an added chilliness, besides, by reason of its formality.

The new members hastily found seats.

On a platform sat Minerva, enthroned; no wonder, for she was a Senior as well as a President. The lesser lights, on either side, it developed, were Secretary and Treasurer; they looked coldly important. The other Platonians sat around.

The Society was asked to come to order. The Society came to order. There was no settling, and re-settling and rustling, and tardy subsidal, as in the class-room, perhaps because the young ladies, in this case, wanted the order.

It went on, though Miss MacLauren was conscious that, for her part, she comprehended very little of what it was all about, though it sounded impressive. You called it Parliamentary Ruling. To an outsider, this seemed almost to mean the longest way round to an end that everybody had seen from the beginning. Parliamentary Ruling also seemed apt to lead its followers into paths unexpected even by them, from which they did not know how to get out, and it also led to revelations humiliating to new members.

The report of the Treasurer was called for.

It showed a deficit.

"Even with the initiation fees and dues from new members?" asked the President.

Even so.

"Then," said the President, "we'll have to elect some more. Any new names for nomination?"

Names, it seemed, were unflatteringly easy to supply, and were rapidly put up and voted upon for nomination.

But suddenly a Platonian was upon her feet; she had been counting. The membership was limited and they had over-stepped that limit. The nominations were unconstitutional.

The Treasurer, at this, was upon her feet, reading from the Constitution: "The revenues of said Society may be increased only by payment of dues by new members"--she paused, and here reminded them that the Society was in debt.

Discussion waxed hot. A constitution had been looked upon as invulnerable.

At last a Platonian arose. She called attention to the fact that time was passing, and moved that the matter be tabled, and the Society proceed with the programme for the day.

Fiercer discussion ensued at this. "Business before pleasure," said a sententious member. "What's a programme to a matter concerning the Constitution itself?"

The sponsor for the motion grew sarcastic. It developed later she was on the programme. Since the business of the Society was only useful as a means of conducting the programme, which was the primary object of the Society's being, she objected to the classing of the programme as unimportant.

But the programme was postponed. When people begin to handle red tape, there is always a chance that they get enmeshed in its voluminous tangles.

It was dark when the Society adjourned. Platonians gave up dinner and Friday afternoons to the cause, but what Platonian doubted it being worth it?

Miss MacLauren and Hattie walked home together. At the corner they met a boy. It was the other boy whose name, as it chanced, was Chester. He joined them and they walked along together. Something made Miss MacLauren's cheek quite red; it was her blush when the boy joined them.

A few steps farther on, they met Miss Kilrain, the new teacher at the High School. It was just as Miss MacLauren was laughing an embarrassed laugh to hide the blush. Miss Kilrain looked at them coldly, one was conscious of her disapproval.

Miss Kilrain's name had been up that very afternoon in the Society for honorary membership. All teachers were made honorary members.

With the Sophomore year, High School pupils had met several new things. Higher Education was one of them. They met it in the person of Miss Kilrain. It looked forbidding. She lowered her voice in speaking of it, and brought the words forth reverently, coupling it with another impressively uttered thing, which she styled Modern Methods.

Miss Kilrain walked mincingly on the balls of her feet. She frequently called the attention of her classes to this, which was superfluous, for so ostentatiously did she do her walking, one could not but be aware of some unnatural quality in her gait. But Miss Kilrain, that they might remember to do the same, reminded her classes so often, they all took to walking on their heels. Human nature is contrary.

Miss Kilrain also breathed from her diaphragm, and urged her pupils to try the same.

"Don't you do it," Rosalie cautioned Emmy Lou. "Look at her waist."

Miss Kilrain came into the High School with some other new things--the new text-books.

There had been violent opposition to the new books, and as violent fight for them. The papers had been full of it, and Emmy Lou had read the particulars of it.

A Mr. Bryan had been in favour of the change. Emmy Lou remembered him, as a Principal, way back in the beginning of things. Mr. Bryan was quoted in the papers as saying:

"Modern methods are the oil that lubricates the wheels of progress."

Professor Koenig, who was opposed to the change, was Principal at the High School. He said that the text-books in use were standards, and that the Latin Series were classics.

"Just what is a classic?" Emmy Lou had asked, looking up from the paper.

Uncle Charlie had previously been reading it himself.

"Professor Koenig is one," said he.

Professor Koenig was little, his beard was grizzled, and the dome of his head was bald. He wore gold spectacles, and he didn't always hear, at which times he would bend his head sideways and peer through his glasses. "Hey?" Professor Koenig would say. But he knew, one felt that he knew, and that he was making his classes know, too. One was conscious of something definite behind Professor Koenig's way of closing the book over one forefinger and tapping upon it with the other. It was a purpose.

What, then, did Uncle Charlie mean by calling Professor Koenig a classic?

"Just what does it mean, exactly--classic?" persisted Emmy Lou.

"That which we are apt to put on the shelf," said Uncle Charlie.

Oh--Emmy Lou had thought he was talking about Professor Koenig; he meant the text-books--she understood now, of course.

But the old books went and the new ones came, and Miss Kilrain came with them.

She came in mincingly on the balls of her feet the opening day of school, and took her place on the rostrum of the chapel with The Faculty. Once one would have said with "the teachers," but in the High School one knew them as The Faculty. Miss Kilrain took her place with them, but she was not of them; the High School populace, gazing up from the groundling's point of view, in serried ranks below, felt that. It was as though The Faculty closed in upon themselves and left Miss Kilrain, with her Modern Methods, outside and alone.

But Miss Kilrain showed a proper spirit, and proceeded to form her intimacies elsewhere; Miss Kilrain grew quite intimate and friendly with certain of the girls.

And now her name had come up for honorary membership in the Platonian Society.

"We've always extended it to The Faculty," a member reminded them.

"Besides, she won't bother us," remarked another. "They never come."

Miss Kilrain was accorded the honour.