n the platform, and Emmy Lou loved the Teacher.

[Illustration: "Emmy Lou."]

The Second-Reader Teacher was the lady, the nice lady, the pretty lady
with white hair, who patted little girls on the cheek as she passed them
in the hall. On the first day of school, the name of "Emily Louise
MacLauren" had been called. Emmy Lou stood up. She looked at the
Teacher. She wondered if the Teacher remembered. Emmy Lou was chubby
and round and much in earnest. And the lady, the pretty lady, looking
down at her, smiled. Then Emmy Lou knew that the lady had not forgotten.
And Emmy Lou sat down. And she loved the Teacher and she loved the
Second Reader. Emmy Lou had not heard the Teacher's name. But could her
grateful little heart have resolved its feelings into words, "Dear
Teacher" must ever after have been the lady's name. And so, as if
impelled by her own chubby weight and some head-and-foot force of
gravity, though Emmy Lou descended steadily to the foot of the
Second-Reader class, there were compensations. The foot was in the
shadow of the platform and within the range of Dear Teacher's smile.

Besides, there was Hattie.

[Illustration: "Kitty McKoeghany."]

Emmy Lou sat with Hattie. They sat at a front desk. Hattie had plaits;
small affairs, perhaps, but tied with ribbons behind each ear. And the
part bisecting Hattie's little head from nape to crown was exact and
true. Emmy Lou admired plaits. And she admired the little pink sprigs on
Hattie's dress.

After Hattie and Emmy Lou had sat together a whole day, Hattie took Emmy
Lou aside as they were going home, and whispered to her.

"Who's your mos' nintimate friend?" was what Emmy Lou understood her to
whisper.

Emmy Lou had no idea what a nintimate friend might be. She did not know
what to do.

"Haven't you got one?" demanded Hattie.

Emmy Lou shook her head.

Hattie put her lips close to Emmy Lou's ear.

"Let's us be nintimate friends," said Hattie.

Though small in knowledge, Emmy Lou was large in faith. She confessed
herself as glad to be a nintimate friend.

When Emmy Lou found that to be a nintimate friend meant to walk about
the yard with Hattie's arm about her, she was glad indeed to be one.
Hitherto, at recess, Emmy Lou had known the bitterness of the outcast
and the pariah, and had stood around, principally in corners, to avoid
being swept off her little feet by the big girls at play, and had gazed
upon a paired-off and sufficient-unto-itself world.