There were no little boys. At the Second Reader the currents of the sexes divided, and little boys were swept out of sight. One mentioned little boys now in undertones.
But head and foot meant something beside little girls bobbing out of their places on the bench to take a neighbor’s place. Head and foot meant tears—that is, when the bobbing was downward and not up. However, if one bobbed down to-day there was the chance of bobbing up to-morrow—that is, with all but Emmy Lou and a little girl answering to the call of “Kitty McKoeghany.”
Step by step Kitty went up, and having reached the top, Kitty stayed there.
And step by step, Emmy Lou, from her original, alphabetically determined position beside Kitty, went down, and then, only because further descent was impossible, Emmy Lou stayed there. But since the foot was nearest the platform Emmy Lou took that comfort out of the situation, for the Teacher sat on the platform, and Emmy Lou loved the Teacher.
“Emmy Lou.”
The Second-Reader Teacher was the lady, the nice lady, the pretty lady with white hair, who patted little girls on the cheek as she passed them in the hall. On the first day of school, the name of “Emily Louise MacLauren” had been called. Emmy Lou stood up. She looked at the Teacher. She wondered if the Teacher remembered. Emmy Lou was chubby and round and much in earnest. And the lady, the pretty lady, looking down at her, smiled. Then Emmy Lou knew that the lady had not forgotten. And Emmy Lou sat down. And she loved the Teacher and she loved the Second Reader. Emmy Lou had not heard the Teacher’s name. But could her grateful little heart have resolved its feelings into words, “Dear Teacher” must ever after have been the lady’s name. And so, as if impelled by her own chubby weight and some head-and-foot force of gravity, though Emmy Lou descended steadily to the foot of the Second-Reader class, there were compensations. The foot was in the shadow of the platform and within the range of Dear Teacher’s smile.
Besides, there was Hattie.