nd cross and disposed to
blame Miss Beaton. She never wanted to see or to hear of Miss Beaton
again.

Upstairs she took from her Latin Grammar a pencilled paper, interlined
and much erased, and tore it into bits--viciously little bits. Then she
went and put them in the waste-paper basket.

"You just feel it and then you write," Margaret had said, and Emily was
feeling again, and deeply; later she wrote.

It was gloomy, that which wrote itself on the paper, nor did it
especially apply to the case in point, "but then," she reminded
herself, bitterly recalling the faithlessness of Hattie, of Rosalie, of
Miss Beaton, "it's True."

She took it to Hattie from some feeling that she was mixed up in this
thing. Hattie closed her Algebra, keeping her finger in the place, while
she took the paper and looked at it. She did not seem impressed or
otherwise, but read it aloud in a matter-of-fact tone:

"A flower sprang from the earth one day
And nodded and blew in a blithesome way,
And the warm sun filled its cup!
A careless hand broke it off and threw
It idly down where it lately grew,
And the same sun withered it up."

"'Up,'" said Hattie, "what's the up for? You don't need it."

"It's--it's for the rhyme," said Emily.

"It's redundancy," said Hattie.

VENUS OR MINERVA?

It was gratifying to be attached to a name again. As a Freshman,
personality had been lost in the High School by reason of overwhelming
numbers. The under-world seems always to be over-populated and valued
accordingly. But progress in the High School, by rigorous enforcement of
the survival of the fittest, brings ultimately a chance for identity.
Emmy Lou, a survivor, found a personality awaiting her in her Sophomore
year. Henceforth she was to be Miss MacLauren.

The year brought further distinction. Along in the term Miss MacLauren
received notification that she had been elected to membership in the
Platonian Society.

"On account of recognised literary qualifications," the note set forth.

Miss MacLauren read the note with blushes, and because of the secret joy
its perusal afforded, she re-read it in private many times more. The
first-fruits of fame are sweet; and as an Athenian might have regarded
an invitation into Olympus, so Miss MacLauren looked upon this opening
into Platonia.

As a Freshman, on Friday afternoons, she had noted certain of the upper
pupils strolling about the buil