right bell tapped by Miss
Clara, now in her place. So again Emmy Lou got up suddenly and by
following the little girl ahead learned that the bell meant, "go out to
the bench."

The Primer Class according to the degree of its infant precocity was
divided in three sections. Emmy Lou belonged to the third section. It
was the last section and she was the last one in it though she had no
idea what a section meant nor why she was in it.

Yesterday the third section had said, over and over, in chorus, "One and
one are two, two and two are four," etc.--but to-day they said, "Two and
one are three, two and two are four."

Emmy Lou wondered, four what? Which put her behind, so that when she
began again they were saying, "two and four are six." So now she knew.
Four is six. But what is six? Emmy Lou did not know.

When she came back to her desk the pencil was there. The fine, new, long
slate-pencil encased in gold paper. And the little boy was gone. He
belonged to the first section, and the first section was now on the
bench. Emmy Lou leaned across and put the pencil back on the little
boy's desk.

Then she prepared herself to copy digits with her stump of a pencil.
Emmy Lou's were always stumps. Her pencil had a way of rolling off her
desk while she was gone, and one pencil makes many stumps. The little
boy had generally helped her pick them up on her return. But strangely,
from this time, her pencils rolled off no more.

But when Emmy Lou took up her slate there was a whole side filled with
digits in soldierly rows across, so her heart grew light and free from
the weight of digits, and she gave her time to the washing of her desk,
a thing in which her soul revelled, and for which, patterning after her
little girl neighbors, she kept within that desk a bottle of soapy water
and rags of gray and unpleasant nature, that never dried, because of
their frequent using. When Emmy Lou first came to school, her cleaning
paraphernalia consisted of a sponge secured by a string to her slate,
which was the badge of the new and the unsophisticated comer. Emmy Lou
had quickly learned that, and no one rejoiced in a fuller assortment of
soap, bottle, and rags than she, nor did a sponge longer dangle from the
frame of her slate.

On coming in from recess this same day, Emmy Lou found the pencil on her
desk again, the beautiful new pencil in the gilded paper. She put it
back.

But when she reached home, the pencil, the beautiful pencil th