Emmy Lou Part 13

At recess Emmy Lou waited near the door for them. They all went out together. After that they were friends. They lived on Emmy Lou's square.

It was strange. But they had just come there to live. That explained it.

"In the white house, the white house with the big yard," the tallest of the little girls explained. She was Alice. The others were her cousins.

They were Rosalie and Amanthus. Such charming names.

Emmy Lou was glad that she lived in the other white house on the square with the next biggest yard. She never had thought of it before, but now she was glad.

Alice talked and Amanthus shook her curls back off her shoulders, and Rosalie wore a little blue locket hung on a golden chain. And Rosalie laughed.

"Isn't it funny and dear?" asked Alice.

"What?" said Emmy Lou.

"The public school," said Alice.

"Is it?" said Emmy Lou.

And then they all laughed, and they hugged Emmy Lou, these three fluttering b.u.t.terflies. And they told Emmy Lou she was funny and dear also.

"We've never been before," said Alice.

"But we are too far from the other school now," said Rosalie.

"It was private school," said Amanthus.

"And this is public school," said Alice.

"It's very different," said Amanthus.

"Oh, very," said Rosalie.

Emmy Lou went and brought Hattie to know the little girls. All the year Emmy Lou was bringing Hattie to know the little girls. But Hattie did not seem to like the little girls as Emmy Lou did. She seemed to prefer Sadie when she could not have Emmy Lou alone. Hattie liked to lead. She could lead Sadie. Generally she could lead Emmy Lou, not always.

But all the while slowly a conviction was taking hold in Emmy Lou's mind. It was a conviction concerning Miss Lizzie.

Near Emmy Lou in the Fourth Reader room sat a little girl named Lisa--Lisa Schmit. Once Emmy Lou had seen Lisa in a doorway--a store doorway hung with festoons of linked sausage. Lisa had told Emmy Lou it was her papa's grocery store.

One day the air of the Fourth Reader room seemed unpleasantly freighted.

As the stove grew hotter, the unpleasantness grew a.s.sertive.

Forty little girls were bending over their slates. It was problems. It had been Digits, Integral Numbers, Tables, Rudiments, according to the teacher, in one's upward course from the Primer, but now it was Problems, though in its nature it was always the same, as complicated as in its name it was varied.

The air was most unpleasant. It took the mind off the finding of the Greatest Common Divisor.

The call-bell on Miss Lizzie's desk dinged. The suddenness and the emphasis of the ding told on unexpected nerves, but it brought the Fourth Reader cla.s.s up erect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "File by the platform in order, bringing your lunch."]

Miss Lizzie was about to speak. Emmy Lou watched Miss Lizzie's lips open. Emmy Lou often found herself watching Miss Lizzie's lips open. It took an actual, deliberate s.p.a.ce of time. They opened, moistened themselves, then shaped the word.

"Who in this room has lunch?" said Miss Lizzie, and her very tones hurt. It was as though one were doing wrong in having lunch.

Many hands were raised. There were luncheons in nearly every desk.

"File by the platform in order, bringing your lunch," said Miss Lizzie.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Lisa's head went down on her arm on the desk."]

Feeling apprehensively criminal--of what, however, she had no idea--Emmy Lou went into line, lunch in hand. One's luncheon might be all that it should, neatly pinned in a fringed napkin by Aunt Cordelia, but one felt embarra.s.sed carrying it up. Some were in newspaper. Emmy Lou's heart ached for those.

Meanwhile Miss Lizzie bent and deliberately smelled of each package in turn as the little girls filed by. Most of the faces of the little girls were red.

Then came Lisa--Lisa Schmit. Her lunch was in paper--heavy brown paper.

Miss Lizzie smelled of Lisa's lunch and stopped the line.

"Open it," said Miss Lizzie.

Lisa rested it on the edge of the platform and untied it. The unpleasantness wafted heavily. There was sausage and dark gray bread and cheese. It was the cheese that was unpleasant.

Miss Lizzie's nose, which bent slightly toward her cheek, had a way of dilating. It dilated now.

"Go open the stove door," said Miss Lizzie.

Lisa went and opened the stove door.

"Now, take it and put it in," said Miss Lizzie.

Lisa took her lunch and put it in. Her round, soap-scoured little cheeks had turned a mottled red. When she got back to her seat, Lisa's head went down on her arm on the desk, and presently even her yellow plaits shook with the convulsiveness of her sobs.

It wasn't the loss of the sausage or the bread or the cheese. Emmy Lou was a big girl now, and she knew.

Emmy Lou went home. It was at the dinner table.

"I don't like Miss Lizzie," said she.

Aunt Cordelia was incredulous, scandalised. "You mustn't talk so."

"Little girls must not know what they like," said Aunt Louise. Aunt Louise was apt to be sententious. She was young.

"Except in puddings," said Uncle Charlie, pa.s.sing Emmy Lou's saucer.

There was pudding for dinner.

But wrong or not, Emmy Lou knew that it was so, she knew she did not like Miss Lizzie.

One morning Miss Lizzie forgot the package of trial-paper. The supply was out.

She called Rosalie. Then she called Emmy Lou. She told them where her house was, then told them to go there, ring the bell, ask for the paper, and return.