u, Miss
Carrie did not seem to think much of it.

Emmy Lou stood up. Miss Carrie was drilling her, and though she did her
best to suit the action to the word, it seemed a complicated
undertaking. The piece was called, "A Plain Direction." Emmy Lou came to
the lines:

"Straight down the Crooked Lane
And all round the Square."

Whatever difficulties her plump forefinger had had over the first three
of these geometrical propositions, it triumphed at the end, for Emmy Lou
paused. A square has four sides, and to suit a four-sided action to the
word, takes time.

Miss Carrie, whose attention had wandered a little, here suddenly
observing, stopped her, saying her gestures were stiff and meaningless.
She said they looked like straight lines cut in the air.

Emmy Lou, anxious to prove her efforts to be conscientious, explained
that they were straight lines, it was a square. Miss Carrie drew
herself up, and, using her coldest tones, told Emmy Lou not to be funny.

"Funny!" Emmy Lou felt that she did not understand.

But this was a mere episode between Fridays. One lived but to prepare
for Fridays, and a Sunday dress was becoming a mere everyday affair,
since one's best must be worn for Fridays.

No other class had these recitations and the Third Reader was envied.
Its members were pointed out and gazed upon, until one realised one was
standing in the garish light of fame. The other readers, it seemed,
longed for fame and craved publicity, and so it came about that the
school was to have an exhibition with Miss Carrie's genius to plan and
engineer the whole. For general material Miss Carrie drew from the whole
school, but the play was for her own class alone.

And this was the day of the exhibition.

Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate of the school. They had
spent the morning in rehearsing. At noon they had been sent home with
instructions to return at half past two. The exhibition would begin at
three.

"Of course," Miss Carrie had said, "you will not fail to be on time."
And Miss Carrie had used her deepest tones.

Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou had wondered how she could even dream of
such a thing.

It was not two o'clock, and the three stood at the gate, the first to
return.

They were in the same piece. It was The Play. In a play one did more
than suit the action to the word, one dressed to suit the part.

In the play Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou found themselves the orphaned
children