girls'
opportunity might come--together with the dregs in the buckets. And at
Recess, too, along with the danger of being run into by the larger girls
at play and having the breath knocked out of one's little body, which
made it necessary to seek sequestered corners and peep out thence, there
was The Man to be watched for and avoided--the low, square,
black-browed, black-bearded Man who brandished a broom at the little
girls who dropped their apple-cores and crusts on the pavements, and who
shook his fist at the jeering little boys who dared to swarm to the
forbidden top and sit straddling the dividing fence. That Uncle Michael,
the janitor, was getting old and had rheumatic twinges was indeed Uncle
Michael's excuse, but Emmy Lou did not know this, and her fear of Uncle
Michael was great accordingly.

But somehow the Primer year wore away; and one day, toward its close, in
the presence of Miss Clara, two solemn-looking gentlemen requested
certain little boys to cipher and several little girls to spell, and
sent others to the blackboard or the chart, while to Emmy Lou was handed
a Primer, open at Page 17, which she was told to read. Knowing Page 17
by heart, and identifying it by its picture, Emmy Lou arose, and her
small voice droned forth in sing-song fashion:

How old are you, Sue?
I am as old as my cat.
And how old is your cat?
My cat is as old as my dog.
And how old is your dog?
My dog is as old as I am.

Having so delivered herself, Emmy Lou sat down, not at all disconcerted
to find that she had been holding her Primer upside down.

Following this, Emmy Lou was told that she had "passed;" and seeing from
the jubilance of the other children that it was a matter to be joyful
over, Emmy Lou went home and told the elders of her family that she had
passed. And these elders, three aunties and an uncle, an uncle who was
disposed to look at Emmy Lou's chubby self and her concerns in jocular
fashion, laughed: 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, 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