ss Fanny read this note. She handed it
to him.

"To each year its evils, I suppose," said Miss Fanny; "to the Primer its
whooping-cough and measles, to the First Reader the shedding of its
incisors. With the Fifth Reader comes the inoculation of doctrines. We
are living the Ten Great Religions."

Mr. Bryan laid the note down. He said he must caution Miss Fanny that,
as Principal or as Teacher, neither he nor she had anything to do with
the religions of the children intrusted to their care. And he must
remind Miss Fanny that these problems of school life could not be met
with levity. He hoped Miss Fanny would take this as he meant it, kindly.

The class listened breathlessly. Was Miss Fanny treating their religions
with levity? What is levity?

It was Emmy Lou who asked the others when they sought to pin the
accusation to Miss Fanny.

Mary Agatha looked it up in the Dictionary. Then she reported:
"Lightness of conduct, want of weight, inconstancy, vanity, frivolity."
She told it off with low and accusing enunciation.

It sounded grave. Emmy Lou was troubled. Could Miss Fanny be all this?
Could she be guilty of levity?

It was soon after that Mary Agatha brought a note; she told Rosalie and
Emmy Lou about it; it asked that Mary Agatha be allowed a seat to
herself. This, Mary Agatha explained, was because, preparatory to
Confirmation, she was trying to keep her mind from secular things, and a
seat to herself would help her to do it.

[Illustration: "Mary Agatha was as one already apart from things
secular."]

To Rosalie and Emmy Lou, Mary Agatha was as one already apart from
things secular. To them the look on her clear, pale little profile was
already rapt.

But Mary Agatha went on to tell them why she was different from Kitty or
Nora, or the others of her Confirmation Class. It was because she was
going to be a Bride of Heaven.

Rosalie listened, awed. But Emmy Lou did not quite understand.

Mary Agatha looked pityingly at her. "You know what a bride is? And you
know what's Heaven?"

The bell rang. Emmy Lou returned to the mental eminence of her Fifth
Reader heights, still hazy. Yet she hardly needed the Dictionary, for
she knew a bride. Aunt Katie had been a bride. With a diamond star. And
presents. And Emmy Lou knew Heaven.

Though lately Emmy Lou's ideas of Heaven had broadened. Hitherto,
Heaven, conceived of the primitive, primary mind, had been a matter of
vague numbers seated in parallel rows, an