[Illustration: "'Let's us be nintimate friends.'"]

Hattie seemed to know everything. In all the glory of its newness Emmy
Lou brought her Second Reader to school. Hattie was scandalised. She
showed her reader soberly encased in a calico cover.

Emmy Lou grew hot. She hid her Reader hastily. Somehow she felt that she
had been immodest. The next day Emmy Lou's Reader came to school
discreetly swathed in calico.

Hardly had the Second Reader begun, when one Friday the music man came.
And after that he came every Friday and stayed an hour.

[Illustration: "Hattie."]

He was a tall, thin man, and he had a point of beard on his chin that
made him look taller. He wore a blue cape, which he tossed on a chair.
And he carried a violin. His name was Mr. Cato. He drew five lines on
the blackboard, and made eight dots that looked as though they were
going upstairs on the lines. Then he rapped on his violin with his bow,
and the class sat up straight.

"This," said Mr. Cato, "is A," and he pointed to a dot. Then he looked
at Emmy Lou. Unfortunately Emmy Lou sat at a front desk.

"Now, what is it?" said Mr. Cato.

"A," said Emmy Lou, obediently. She wondered. But she had met A in so
many guises of print and script that she accepted any statement
concerning A. And now a dot was A.

"And this," said Mr. Cato, "is B, and this is C, and this D, and E, F,
G, which brings us naturally to A again," and Mr. Cato with his bow went
up the stairway punctuated with dots.

Emmy Lou wondered why G brought one naturally to A again.

But Mr. Cato was tapping up the dotted stairway with his bow. "Now what
are they?" asked Mr. Cato.

"Dots," said Emmy Lou, forgetting.

Mr. Cato got red in the face and rapped angrily.

"A," said Emmy Lou, hastily, "B, C, D, E, F, G, H," and was going
hurriedly on when Hattie, with a surreptitious jerk, stopped her.

"That is better," said Mr. Cato, "A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A--exactly--but
we are not going to call them A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A--" Mr. Cato paused
impressively, his bow poised, and looked at Emmy Lou--"we are going to
call them"--and Mr. Cato touched a dot--"do"--his bow went up the
punctuated stairway--"re, mi, fa, sol, la, si. Now what is this?" The
bow pointed itself to Emmy Lou, then described a curve, bringing it
again to a dot.

"A," said Emmy Lou. The bow rapped angrily on the board, and Mr. Cato
glared.

"Do," said Mr. Cato, "do--always do--not A, nor B, nor C, never A, nor
B, n