Miss Lizzie kept in.
The ways of teachers like rainy days and growing pains belong to the
inexplicable and inevitable. All teachers have ways, that is to be
expected, it is the part of an Emmy Lou to adjust herself to meet, not
to try to understand, these ways.
Miss Lizzie kept in, but that was only one of her ways, she had many
others. Perhaps they were no more peculiar than the ways of her
predecessors, but they were more alarming.
Miss Lizzie placed a deliberate hand on her call bell and, as its
vibrations dinged and smote upon the shrinking tympanum, a rigid and
breathless expectancy would pervade the silence of the Fourth Reader
room.
Miss Lizzie was tall, she seemed to tower up and over one's personality.
One had no mind of her own, but one said what one thought Miss Lizzie
wanted her to say. Sometimes one got it wrong. Then Miss Lizzie's cold
up-and-down survey smote one into a condition something akin to vacuity,
until Miss Lizzie said briefly, "Sit down."
Then one sat down hastily.
Miss Lizzie never wasted a word. Miss Lizzie closed her lips. She closed
them so their lines were blue. Her eyes were blue too, but not a
pleasant blue. Miss Lizzie did not scold, she looked. She kept looking
until one became aware of an elbow resting on the desk. In her room
little girls must sit erect.
Sometimes she changed. It came suddenly. One day it came suddenly and
Miss Lizzie boxed the little girl's ears. The little girl had knocked
over a pile of slates collected on the platform for marking.
Another time she changed. It was when the little girl brought a note
from home because her ears were boxed. Miss Lizzie tore the note in
pieces and threw them on the floor.
One lived in dread of her changing. One watched in order to know the
thing she wanted. Emmy Lou knew every characteristic feature of her
face--the lean nose that bent toward the cheek, the thin lips that
tightened and relaxed, the cold survey that travelled from desk to desk.
Miss Lizzie's thin hands were never still any more than were her eyes.
Most often her fingers tore bits of paper into fine shreds while she
heard lessons.
Life is strenuous. In each reader the strenuousness had taken a
different form. In the Fourth Reader it was Copy-Books.
Miss Lizzie always took an honour in Copy-Books, and she meant to take
an honour this year. But the road to fame is laborious.
She had her methods. Each morning she gave out four slips of paper to
each little girl. This was trial paper. On these slips each little girl
practised until the result was good enough, in Miss Lizzie's opinion, to
go into the book. Some lines must be fine and hair-like. Over these Emmy
Lou held her breath anxiously. Others must be heavy and laboured. Over
these she unconsciously put the tip of her tongue between her teeth
until it was just visible between her lips.
What, however, is school for but the accommodating of self to the
changing demands of teachers? In the Fourth Reader it was fine lines on
the upward strokes and heavy lines on the downward.
Emmy Lou finally found the way. By turning the pen over and writing with
the back of the point, the upward strokes emerged fine and hair-like.
This having somewhat altered the mechanism of the pen point, its
reversal brought lines sombre and heavy. It was slow and laborious, and
it spoiled an alarming number of pen points; but then it achieved fine
lines upward and heavy lines downward, and that is what Copy-Books are
for.
Hattie reached the result differently. She kept two bottles of ink, one
for fine and one for heavy lines. One was watered ink and one was not.
The trouble was about the trial-paper. One could have only four pieces.
And the copy could go in the book only after the writing on the trial
paper met with the approval of Miss Lizzie. So if one reached the end of
the trial-paper before reaching approval one was kept in, for a half
page of Copy-Book must be done each day. And "kept in" meant staying
after school, in hunger, disgrace, and the silence of a great, deserted
building, to write on trial-paper until the copy was good enough to be
put in.
Emmy Lou did not sit with Hattie in the Fourth Reader. On the first day
Miss Lizzie asked the class if there was any desk-mate a little girl
preferred. At that one's heart opened and one told Miss Lizzie.
At first Emmy Lou did not understand. For Miss Lizzie promptly seated
all the would-be mates as far apart as possible.
Emmy Lou thought about it. _It seemed as though Miss Lizzie did it to be
mean._
Then Emmy Lou's cheeks grew hot. She put the thought quickly away that
she might forget it; but the wedge was entered. Teachers were no longer
_infallible_. Emmy Lou had questioned the motives of pedagogic deism.
And so Emmy Lou and Hattie were separated. But there were three new
little girls near Emmy Lou. Their kid button-shoes had tassels. Very few
little girls had button-shoes. Button-shoes were new. Emmy Lou had
button-shoes. She was proud of them. But they did not have tassels.
The three new little girls looked amused at everything, and exchanged
glances; but they were not mean glances--not the kind of glances when
little girls nudge each other and go off to whisper. Emmy Lou liked the
new little girls. She could not keep from looking at them. They spread
their skirts so easily when they sat down. There was something alluring
about the little girls.
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 butterflies. 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 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.