INE

Emmy Lou was now a Big Girl. One climbed from floor to floor as one
went up in Readers. With the Fifth Reader one reached the dizzy eminence
of top. Emmy Lou now stood, as it were, upon a peak in Darien and stared
at the great unknown, rolling ahead, called The Grammar School.

Behind, descended the grades of one's achievements back to the A, B, C
of things. One had once been a pygmy part of the Primer World on the
first floor one's self, and from there had gazed upward at the haloed
beings peopling these same Fifth Reader Heights.

But Emmy Lou felt that somehow she was failing to experience the
expected sense of dizzy height, or the joy of perquisite and privilege.
To be sure, being a Big Girl, she found herself at recess, one of many,
taking hands in long, undulating line, and, like the Assyrian, sweeping
down on the fold, while the fold, in the shape of little girls, fled
shrieking before the onslaught.

But there had been a time when Emmy Lou had been a little girl, and had
fled, shrieking, herself. The memory kept her from quite enjoying the
onslaught now, though of course a little girl of the under world is only
a Primary and must be made to feel it. The privileged members of the
Fifth Reader World are Intermediates.

They are other things, too. They are Episcopalians or Presbyterians or
some other correspondingly polysyllabic thing, as the case may be. In
this case each seemed to be a different thing. Hattie first called the
attention of Emmy Lou to it.

The Fifth Reader members ate lunch in groups. Without knowing it, one
was growing gregarious. And as becomes a higher social state, one passed
one's luncheon around.

[Illustration: "Hattie took Emmy Lou aside. 'It's their religion.'"]

Emmy Lou passed her luncheon around. Emmy Lou herself knew the joys of
eating; and hers, too, was a hospitable soul. She brought liberal
luncheons. On this day, between the disks of her beaten biscuit showed
the pinkness of sliced ham.

Mary Agatha drew back; Mary Agatha was Emmy Lou's newest friend. "It's
Friday," said Mary Agatha.

"Of course," said Rosalie, "I forgot." Rosalie put her biscuit back.

"It's ham," said Rebecca Steinau.

Emmy Lou was hurt. It seemed almost like preconcerted reflection on her
biscuits and her ham.

Hattie took Emmy Lou aside. "It's their religion," said Hattie, in tones
of large tolerance. "We can eat anything, you and I, 'Piscopalians and
Presbyterians."

"But Rosalie," sa