"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.
"That sounds more natural," said Uncle Charlie, but nobody listened.
"She's been missing," said Aunt Louise.
"She's growing too fast," said Aunt Cordelia, who had just been ripping
two tucks out of Emmy Lou's last winter's dress; "she can't be well."
So Emmy Lou was taken to the doctor, who gave her a tonic. And following
this, she all at once regained her usual cheerful little state of mind,
and expressed no more unwillingness to go to school.
But it was not the tonic.
[Illustration: "One loved the far corner of the sofa."]
It was the Green and Gold Book.
Rosalie brought it. It belonged to her and to Alice and to Amanthus.
They lent it to Emmy Lou.
And the glamour opened and closed about Emmy Lou, and she knew--she knew
it all--why the hair of Amanthus gleamed, why Alice flitted where others
walked, why laughter dwelt in the cheek of Rosalie. The glamour opened
and closed about Emmy Lou, and she and Rosalie and Alice and Amanthus
moved in a world of their own--the world of the Green and Gold Book, for
the Green and Gold Book was "The Book of Fairy Tales."
The strange, the inexplicable, the meaningless, that hitherto one had
thought the real--teachers, problems, such--they became the outer world,
the things of small matter.
One loved the far corner of the sofa now, with the book in one's lap,
with one's hair falling about one's face and book, shutting out the
unreal world and its people.
The real world lay between the covers of the Green and Gold Book--the
real world and its people.
And the Princess was always Rosalie, and the Prince--ah! the Prince was
the Prince. One had met one's Rosalie, but not yet the Prince.
One could not talk of these things except to Rosalie. Hattie would not
understand. One was glad when Rosalie told them to Alice and Amanthus,
but one could not tell one's self.
And Miss Lizzie? Miss Lizzie had stepped all at once into her proper
place. One had not understood before. One would not want Miss Lizzie
different. It was right and natural to Miss Lizzie's condition--which
condition varied according to the page in the Book, for Miss Lizzie was
the Cruel Step-mother, Miss Lizzie was the Wicked Fairy Godmother, Miss
Lizzie was the Ogress, the wife of the terrible giant.
One told Rosalie. But Rosalie went even further. Miss Lizzie was the
grim and terrible Ogress who dwelt in her lonely castle. True. The
school-house was the castle of the Ogress. And the forty little girls in
the Fourth Reader were the captives--the captive Princesses--kept by
Miss Lizzie until certain tasks were performed.
One looked at Problems differently now. One saw Copy-books through a
glamour. They were tasks, and each task done, the nearer release from
Miss Lizzie.
Did one fail--?
Emmy Lou held her breath. Rosalie spoke softly: "The lady at the
window--her finger at her lips--she had failed--"
Miss Lizzie was the Ogress, and the lady was the Princess--the captive
Princess--waiting at the window for release.
And so one played one's part. And so Emmy Lou and Rosalie moved and
lived and dreamed in the glamour and the world of the Green and Gold
Book.
It stayed in one's desk--sometimes with Alice, or with Amanthus,
sometimes with Rosalie. To-day it was with Emmy Lou.
One never read in school. But at recess, on the steps outside the big
door, one read aloud in turn while the others ate their apples. And
Hattie came, too, when she liked, and Sadie. But one carried the book
home, that one might not be parted from it.
To-day it was with Emmy Lou. It had certain treasures between its
leaves. One expects to find faint sweet rose-leaves between the pages of
the Green and Gold Book, and the scrap of tinsel recalls the gleam and
shimmer of the goose girl's ball-dress of woven moonbeams.
To-day the book was in Emmy Lou's desk.
Emmy Lou was at the board. It was Problems. She did not need a book.
Miss Lizzie dictated when one was at the board. Emmy Lou was poor at
Problems and Miss Lizzie was cross about it.
Sadie, at her desk, needed a book. She had forgotten her Arithmetic, and
asked permission to borrow Emmy Lou's.
[Illustration: "You hadn't any right."]
She went to get it. She pulled it out. Sadie had a way of being
unfortunate. She also pulled another book out which fell open on the
floor, shedding rose-leaves and tinsel.
The green and gold glitter of the book caught Miss Lizzie's eye.
Her fingers had been tearing at bits of paper all morning until her desk
was strewn.
"Bring it to me," she said.
Miss Lizzie took the book from Sadie and looked at it.
Emmy Lou had just failed quite miserably at Problems. Miss Lizzie's face
changed. It was as if a white rage passed over it. She stepped to the
stove and cast the book in.
The very flames turned green and gold.
It was gone--the world of glamour, of glory, of dreams--the world of
Emmy Lou and Rosalie, of Alice and Amanthus.
It was not Emmy Lou. It was a cry through Emmy Lou. Emmy Lou was just
beginning to grow tall, just losing the round-eyed faith of babyhood.
"_You hadn't any right._"
It was terrible. The Fourth Reader class failed to breathe.
Emmy Lou must say she was sorry. Emmy Lou would not.
The hours of school dragged on. Emmy Lou sat silent.
Rosalie looked at her. Laughter had died in Rosalie's cheek. Rosalie
pressed her fingers tight in misery for Emmy Lou.
Sadie looked at Emmy Lou. Sadie wept.
Hattie looked at Emmy Lou. Hattie straightened her straight little back
and ground her little teeth. Hattie was of that blood which has risen up
and slain for affection's sake.
This was an Emmy Lou nobody knew--white-cheeked, brooding, defiant.
There are strange potentialities in every Emmy Lou.
The last bell rang.
Emmy Lou must say she was sorry. Emmy Lou would not.
Everyone went--everyone but Emmy Lou and Miss Lizzie--casting backward
looks of awe and commiseration.
To be left alone in that nearness solitude entails meant torture, the
torture of loathing, of shrinking, of revulsion.
She must say she was sorry. Emmy Lou was not sorry.
She sat dry-eyed. The tears would come later. More than once this year
they had come after home and Aunt Cordelia's arms were reached. And Aunt
Cordelia had thought it was because one was growing too fast. And Aunt
Cordelia had rocked and patted and sung about "The Frog Who Would
A-Wooing Go."
And then Emmy Lou had laughed because Aunt Cordelia did not know that
The Frog and Jenny Wren and The Little Wee Bear were gone into the past,
and The Green and Gold Book come to take their place.
The bell had rung at two o'clock. At three Tom came. Tom was the
house-boy. He was suave and saddle-coloured and smiling. He had come for
Emmy Lou.
Miss Lizzie looked at Emmy Lou. Emmy Lou looked straight ahead.
Then Miss Lizzie looked at Tom. Miss Lizzie could do a good deal with a
look. Tom became uneasy, apologetic, guilty. Then he went. It took a
good deal to wilt Tom.
At half-past three he knocked at the door again. He gave his message
from outside the threshold this time. Emmy Lou must come home. Miss
Cordelia said so. Emmy Lou's papa had come.
Emmy Lou heard Papa--who came a hundred miles once a month to see her.
Would Emmy Lou say she was sorry? Emmy Lou was not sorry, she could not.
Miss Lizzie shut the door in Tom's face.
Later Aunt Cordelia, bonnet on, returning from the school, explained to
her brother-in-law.
Her brother-in-law regarded her thoughtfully through his eye-glasses. He
was an editor, and had a mental habit of classifying people while they
talked, and putting them away in pigeon-holes. While Aunt Cordelia
talked he was putting her in a pigeon-hole marked "Guileless."
"She stood on the outside of the door, Brother Richard," said Aunt
Cordelia, quite flushed and breathless, "with the door drawn to behind
her. She's a terrifying woman, Richard. She said it was a case for
discipline. She said she would allow no interference. My precious baby!
And I kept on giving her iron----"
Uncle Charlie had come out with the buggy to take his brother-in-law
driving.
"What did you come back without her for?" demanded Uncle Charlie.
Aunt Cordelia turned on Uncle Charlie. "You go and see why," said Aunt
Cordelia.
Truly an Aunt Cordelia is the last one to stand before a Miss Lizzie.
Uncle Charlie took his brother-in-law in the buggy, and they drove to
the school. Emmy Lou's father went in.
Uncle Charlie sat in the buggy and waited. Uncle Charlie wondered if it
was right. Miss Lizzie was one of three. One was in an asylum. One was
kept at home. And Miss Lizzie, with her rages, taught.
But could one speak, and take work and bread from a Miss Lizzie?
When papa came down, he had Emmy Lou, white-cheeked, by the hand. He had
also a sternness about his mouth.
"I got her, you see," he explained with an assumption of comical
chagrin, "but with limitations. She's got to say she's sorry, or she
can't come back."
"I'm not sorry," said Emmy Lou wearily, but with steadiness.
"Stick it out," said Uncle Charlie, who knew his Emmy Lou.
"She needn't go back this year," said Aunt Cordelia when she heard, "my
precious baby!"
"I will teach her at home," said Aunt Louise.
"There must be other Green and Gold Books," said papa, "growing on that
same tree."
But Uncle Charlie, with brows drawn into a frown, was wondering.