FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88  
89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   >>  
stance, at Grammar School, one no longer speaks of boys in undertones. One assumes an attitude of having always known boys. At Grammar School, classes attend chapel. There are boys in Chapel, still separated from the girls, to be sure, after the manner of the goats from the sheep; but after one learns to laugh from the corners of one's eyes at boys, a dividing line of mere aisle is soon abridged. Watching Rosalie, Emmy Lou discovered this. There was a boy in Chapel whom she knew, but it takes courage to look out of the corners of one's eyes, and Emmy Lou could only find sufficient to look straight, which is altogether a different thing. But the boy saw her. Emmy Lou looked away quickly. Once the boy's name had been Billy; later, at dancing school, it was Willie; now, the Principal who conducted Chapel Exercises called him William. Emmy Lou liked this Principal. He had white hair, and when it fell into his eyes he would stand it wildly over his head, running his fingers through its thickness; but one did not laugh because of greater interest in what he said. Emmy Lou asked Rosalie the Principal's name, but Rosalie was smiling backward at a boy as the classes filed out of Chapel. Afterward she explained that his name was Mr. Page. At Grammar School Emmy Lou continued to learn things. The pupils of a grammar school abjure school bags; a Geography now being a folio volume measurable in square feet, it is the thing to build upon its basic foundation an edifice of other text-books, and carry the sum total to and fro on an aching arm. Nor do grammar-school pupils bring lunch; they bring money, and buy lunch--pies, or doughnuts, or pickles--having done with the infant pabulum of primary bread and butter. Nor does so big a girl as a grammar-school pupil longer confess to any infantile abbreviation of entitlement; she gives her full baptismal name and is written down, as in Emmy Lou's case, Emily Louise Pope MacLauren, which has its drawbacks; for she sometimes fails to recognise the unaccustomed sound of that name when called unexpectedly from the platform. For at twelve years, an Emmy Lou finds herself dreaming, and watching the clouds through the school-room windows. The reading lesson concerns one Alnaschar, the Barber's Fifth Brother; and while the verses go droningly round, the kalsomined blue walls fade, and one wanders the market-place of Bagdad, amid bales of rich stuffs, and trays of golden trinkets a
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88  
89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   >>  



Top keywords:

school

 

Chapel

 

Principal

 
School
 
Rosalie
 

grammar

 
Grammar
 

called

 

pupils

 

corners


classes
 

longer

 

entitlement

 

baptismal

 

butter

 
confess
 

infantile

 

abbreviation

 

foundation

 
edifice

aching

 
infant
 

pabulum

 

primary

 

pickles

 

doughnuts

 

unexpectedly

 
verses
 

droningly

 

kalsomined


Brother

 

concerns

 

lesson

 

Alnaschar

 

Barber

 

stuffs

 

golden

 

trinkets

 

wanders

 

market


Bagdad

 

reading

 

windows

 

drawbacks

 

recognise

 

MacLauren

 
Louise
 

unaccustomed

 

dreaming

 

watching