it; and Emmy Lou went on wondering
what it was all about, which never would have been the case had there
been a mother among the elders of the house, for mothers have a way of
understanding these things. But to Emmy Lou "mother" had come to mean
but a memory which faded as it came, a vague consciousness of encircling
arms, of a brooding tender face, of yearning eyes; and it was only
because they told her that Emmy Lou remembered how mother had gone away
South, one winter, to get well. That they afterward told her it was
heaven, in nowise confused Emmy Lou, because, for aught she knew, South
and heaven and much else might be included in these points of the
compass. Ever since then Emmy Lou had lived with three aunties and an
uncle; and papa had been coming a hundred miles once a month to see her.

But somehow the Primer year wore away; and the close of the first week
of Emmy Lou's second year at a certain large public school found her
round, chubby self, like a pink-cheeked period, ending the long line of
intermingled little boys and girls making what was known, twenty-five
years ago, as the First Reader Class.

Her heart grew still within her at the slow, awful enunciation of the
Large Lady in black bombazine who reigned over the department of the
First Reader, pointing her morals with a heavy forefinger, before which
Emmy Lou's eyes lowered with every aspect of conscious guilt. Nor did
Emmy Lou dream that the Large Lady, whose black bombazine was the
visible sign of a loss by death that had made it necessary for her to
enter the school-room to earn a living, was finding the duties incident
to the First Reader almost as strange and perplexing as Emmy Lou
herself.

Emmy Lou from the first day found herself descending steadily to the
foot of the class; and there she remained until the awful day, at the
close of the first week, when the Large Lady, realizing perhaps that
she could no longer ignore such adherence to that lowly position, made
discovery that while to Emmy Lou "d-o-g" might spell "dog" and "f-r-o-g"
might spell "frog," Emmy Lou could not find either on a printed page,
and further, could not tell wherein they differed when found for her;
that, also, Emmy Lou made her figure 8's by adding one uncertain little
o to the top of another uncertain little o; and that while Emmy Lou
might copy, in smeary columns, certain cabalistic signs off the
blackboard, she could not point them off in tens, hundreds, thousands,