Along in the year a new feature was introduced in the Second Reader. The Second Reader was to have a Medal. Dear Teacher did not seem enthusiastic. She seemed to dread tears. But it was decreed that the school was to use medals.
At recess Emmy Lou asked Hattie what a medal was. The big Fourth and Fifth Reader girls were playing games from which the little girls were excluded, for the school was large and the yard was small. At one time it had seemed to Emmy Lou that the odium, the obloquy, the reproach of being a little girl was more than she could bear, but she would not change places with anyone, now she was a nintimate friend.
Emmy Lou asked Hattie what it was—this medal.
Hattie explained. Hattie knew everything. A medal was—well—a medal. It hung on a blue ribbon. Each little girl brought her own blue ribbon. You wore it for a week—this medal.
That afternoon Emmy Lou went round the corner to Mrs. Heinz’s little fancy store. Her chin just came to Mrs. Heinz’s counter. But she knew what she wanted—a yard of blue ribbon.
She showed it to Hattie the next day, folded in its paper, and slipped for safety beneath the long criss-cross stitches which held the calico cover of her Second Reader.
Then Hattie explained. One had to stay head a whole week to get the medal.
Emmy Lou’s heart was heavy—the more that she had now seen the medal. It was a silver medal that said “Merit.” It was around Kitty McKoeghany’s neck.
And Kitty tossed her head. And when, at recess, she ran, the medal swung to and fro on its ribbon. And the big girls all stopped Kitty to look at the medal.
There was a condition attached to the gaining of the medal. Upon receiving it one had to go foot. But that mattered little to Kitty McKoeghany. Kitty climbed right up again.