One day at recess a new-comer who had entered late was standing around. Her cheek was pale, though her eager look about lent a light to her face. But all seemed paired off and absorbed and the eager look faded. Emily, whom she had not seen, moved nearer, and the new-comer’s face brightened. “They give long recesses,” she said.
“Wondering if she was pretty.”
Emily felt drawn to her, for since being deserted she was not enjoying recesses herself.
“Yes,” she said, “they do”; and the next day another pair, Emily and the new-comer, joined the promenade about the basement.
The new pupil’s name was Margaret; that is, since it stopped being Maggie. Emily confessed to having once been Emmy herself, with a middle name of Lou besides, and after that they told each other everything. Margaret loved to read and had lately come to own a certain book which she brought to lend Emily, and over its pages they drew together. The book was called “Percy’s Reliques.”
Beside the common way lies the Ballad Age, but Emily would have passed, unknowing, had not Margaret, drawing the branches aside, revealed it; and into the sylvan glades she stepped, pipes and tabret luring, with life and self at once in tune.
And then Margaret told her something, “if she would never, never tell”—Margaret wrote things herself.
It was about this time that Rosalie was moved to seek Emily, as of old, to relate a Romantic Situation. She warned her that it would be sad, but Emily did not mind that. She loved sad things these days, and even found an exultation in them if they were very, very sad.