Along in the year a new feature was introduced in the Second Reader. The Second Reader was to have a Medal. Dear Teacher did not seem enthusiastic. She seemed to dread tears. But it was decreed that the school was to use medals.
At recess Emmy Lou asked Hattie what a medal was. The big Fourth and Fifth Reader girls were playing games from which the little girls were excluded, for the school was large and the yard was small. At one time it had seemed to Emmy Lou that the odium, the obloquy, the reproach of being a little girl was more than she could bear, but she would not change places with anyone, now she was a nintimate friend.
Emmy Lou asked Hattie what it was-this medal.
Hattie explained. Hattie knew everything. A medal was-well-a medal. It hung on a blue ribbon. Each little girl brought her own blue ribbon. You wore it for a week-this medal.
That afternoon Emmy Lou went round the corner to Mrs. Heinz's little fancy store. Her chin just came to Mrs. Heinz's counter. But she knew what she wanted-a yard of blue ribbon.
She showed it to Hattie the next day, folded in its paper, and slipped for safety beneath the long criss-cross stitches which held the calico cover of her Second Reader.
Then Hattie explained. One had to stay head a whole week to get the medal.
Emmy Lou's heart was heavy-the more that she had now seen the medal. It was a silver medal that said "Merit." It was around Kitty McKoeghany's neck.
And Kitty tossed her head. And when, at recess, she ran, the medal swung to and fro on its ribbon. And the big girls all stopped Kitty to look at the medal.
There was a condition attached to the gaining of the medal. Upon receiving it one had to go foot. But that mattered little to Kitty McKoeghany. Kitty climbed right up again.
And Emmy Lou peeped surreptitiously at the blue ribbon in her Second Reader. And at home she placed her dolls in line and spelt the back lessons faithfully, with comfort in her knowledge of them. And the old battered doll, dear to her heart, wore oftenest a medal of shining tinfoil. For even Hattie, in one of Kitty's off weeks, had won the medal.
It was late in the year when a rumour ran around the Second Reader room. The trustees were coming that day to visit the school.
[Illustration: "Emmy Lou spelled steadily."]
Emmy Lou wondered what trustees were. She asked Hattie. Hattie explained. "They are men, in black clothes. You daren't move in your seat. They're something like ministers." Hattie knew everything.
"Will they come here, in our room?" asked Emmy Lou. It was terrible to be at the front desk. Emmy Lou remembered the music man. He still pointed his bow at her on Fridays.
"Of course," said Hattie; "comp'ny always comes to our room."
Which was true, for Dear Teacher's room was different. Dear Teacher's room seemed always ready, and the Principal brought company to it accordingly.
It was after recess they came-the Principal, the Trustee (there was just one Trustee), and a visiting gentleman.
There was a hush as they filed in. Hattie was right. It was like ministers. The Principal was in black, with a white tie. He always was. And the Trustee was in black. He rubbed his hands and bowed to the Second Reader Class, sitting very straight and awed. And the visiting gentleman was in black, with a shiny black hat.
The Trustee was a big man, and his face was red, and when urged by the Principal to address the Second Reader Class, his face grew redder.
The Trustee waved his hand toward the visiting gentleman. "Mr. Hammel, children, the Hon. Samuel S. Hammel, a citizen with whose name you are all, I am sure, familiar." And then the Trustee, mopping his face, got behind the visiting gentleman and the Principal.
The visiting gentleman stood forth. He was a short, little man-a little, round man, whose feet were so far back beneath a preponderating circumference of waist line, that he looked like nothing so much as one of Uncle Charlie's pouter pigeons.
He was a smiling-and-bowing little man, and he held out his fat hand playfully, and in it a shining white box.
Dear Teacher seemed taller and very far off. She looked as she did the day she told the class they were to have a medal. Emmy Lou watched Dear Teacher anxiously. Something told her Dear Teacher was troubled.
The visiting gentleman began to speak. He called the Second Reader Class "dear children," and "mothers of a coming generation," and "moulders of the future welfare."
The Second Reader Class sat very still. There seemed to be something paralysing to their infant faculties, mental and physical, in learning they were "mothers" and "moulders." But Emmy Lou breathed freer to have it applied impartially and not to the front seat.
Their "country, the pillars of state, everything," it seemed, depended on the way in which these mothers learned their Second Readers. "As mothers and moulders, they must learn now in youth to read, to number, to spell-exactly-to spell!" And the visiting gentleman nodded meaningly, tapped the white box and looked smilingly about. The mothers moved uneasily. The smile they avoided. But they wondered what was in the box.
The visiting gentleman lifted the lid, and displayed a glittering, shining something on a bed of pink cotton.
Then, as if struck by a happy thought, he turned to the blackboard. He looked about for chalk. The Principal supplied him. Fashioned by his fat, white hand, these words sprawled themselves upon the blackboard:
The best speller in this room is to recieve this medal.
There was silence. Then the Second Reader class moved. It breathed a long breath.
A whisper went around the room while Dear Teacher and the gentleman were conferring. Rumour said Kitty McKoeghany started it. Certainly Kitty, in her desk across the aisle from Hattie, in the sight of all, tossed her black head knowingly.
The whisper concerned the visiting gentleman. "He is running for Trustee," said the whisper.
Emmy Lou wondered. Hattie seemed to understand. "He puts his name up on tree-boxes and fences," she whispered to Emmy Lou, "and that's running for Trustee."
The rumour was succeeded by another.
"He's running against the Trustee that's not here to-day."
No wonder Kitty McKoeghany was head. The extent of Kitty's knowledge was boundless.
The third confidence was freighted with strange import. It came straight from Kitty to Hattie, who told it to Emmy Lou.
"When he's Trustee, he means the School Board shall take his pork house for the new school."
Even Emmy Lou knew the pork house which had built itself unpleasantly near the neighbourhood.
Just then the Second Reader class was summoned to the bench. As the line took its place a hush fell. Emmy Lou, at its foot, looked up its length and wondered how it would seem to be Kitty McKoeghany at the head.
The three gentlemen were looking at Kitty, too. Kitty tossed her head. Kitty was used to being looked at because of being head.
The low words of the gentleman reached the foot of the line. "The head one, that's McKoeghany's little girl." It was the Trustee telling the visiting gentleman. Emmy Lou did not wonder that Kitty was being pointed out. Kitty was head. But Emmy Lou did not know that it was because Kitty was Mr. Michael McKoeghany's little girl that she was being pointed out as well as because she was head, for Mr. Michael McKoeghany was the political boss of a district known as Limerick, and by the vote of Limerick a man running for office could stand or fall.
Now there were many things unknown to Emmy Lou, about which Kitty, being the little girl of Mr. Michael McKoeghany, could have enlightened her.
Kitty could have told her that the yard of the absent Trustee ran back to the pork house. Also that the Trustee present was part owner of that offending building. And further that Emmy Lou's Uncle Charlie, leading an irate neighbourhood to battle, had compelled the withdrawal of the obnoxious business.