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.
n.o.body 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 ap.r.o.n, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 n.o.body 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 G.o.dmother, 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.