"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 assertive.
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 class up erect.
[Illustration: "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 space 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.
[Illustration: "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 embarrassed 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, passing 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.
It seemed strange and unreal to be walking the streets in school-time. Rosalie skipped. So Emmy Lou skipped, too. Miss Lizzie lived seven squares away. It was a cottage-a little cottage. On one side its high board fence ran along an alley, but on the other side was a big yard with trees and bushes. The cottage was almost hidden, and it seemed strange and far off.
Rosalie rang the bell. Then Emmy Lou rang the bell.
Nobody came.
They kept on ringing the bell. They did not know what to do. They were afraid to go back and tell Miss Lizzie, so they went around the side. It was a narrow, paved court between the house and the high board fence. It was dark. They held each other's hands.
There was a window. Someone tapped. It was a lady-a pretty lady. There was a flower in her hair-an artificial flower. She nodded to them. She smiled. She laughed. Then she put her finger on her lips. Emmy Lou and Rosalie did not know what to do.
The lady pointed to her throat and then to Rosalie. It seemed as if it were the blue locket on the golden chain she wanted.
Then someone came. It was an old woman. It was the servant Miss Lizzie had said would come to the door. She came from the front. She had been away somewhere.
She looked cross. She told them to go around to the front door. As they went the lady tapped. Rosalie looked back. Rosalie said the lady had pulled the flower from her hair and was tearing it to pieces.
The old woman brought the trial-paper. She told them not to mention coming around in the court, and not to say they had had to wait.
It was strange. But many things are strange when one is ten. One learns to put many strange things aside.
There were more worrisome things nearer. The screw was loose which secured the iron foot of Emmy Lou's desk to the floor. Now the front of one desk formed the seat to the next.
Muscles, even in the atmosphere of a Miss Lizzie's rigid discipline, sometimes rebel. The little girl sitting in front of Emmy Lou was given to spasmodic changes of posture, causing unexpected upheavals of Emmy Lou's desk.
On one of these occasions Emmy Lou's ink bottle went over. It was Copy-Book hour. That one's apron, beautiful with much fine ruffling, should be ruined, was a small matter when one's trial-paper had been straight in the path of the flood. Neither was Emmy Lou's condition of digital helplessness to be thought of, although it did seem as if all great Neptune's ocean and more might be needed to make those little fingers white again. Sponges, slate-rags, and neighbourly solicitude did what they could. But the trial-paper was steeped indelibly past redemption.
[Illustration: "She raised a timid and deep-dyed hand."]
Still not a word from Miss Lizzie. Only a cold and prolonged survey of the scene, only an entire suspension of action in the Fourth Reader room while Miss Lizzie waited.
At last Emmy Lou was ready to resume work. She raised a timid and deep-dyed hand, and made known her need.
"Please, I have no trial-paper."
Miss Lizzie's lips unclosed. Had she waited for this? "Then," said Miss Lizzie, "you will stay after school."
Emmy Lou's heart burned, the colour slowly left her cheeks.
It was something besides Emmy Lou that looked straight out of Emmy Lou's eyes at Miss Lizzie. It was Judgment.
Miss Lizzie was not fair.
Emmy Lou did not reach home until dinner was long over. She had first to cover four slips of trial-paper and half a page in her book with upward strokes fine and hair-like, and downward strokes black and heavy. Emmy Lou ate her dinner alone.
At supper she spoke. Emmy Lou generally spoke conclusions and, unless pressed, did not enter into the processes of her reasoning.
"I don't want to go to school any more."
Aunt Cordelia looked shocked. Aunt Louise looked stern. Uncle Charlie looked at Emmy Lou.