Emmy Lou went and brought Hattie to know the little girls. All the year Emmy Lou was bringing Hattie to know the little girls. But Hattie did not seem to like the little girls as Emmy Lou did. She seemed to prefer Sadie when she could not have Emmy Lou alone. Hattie liked to lead. She could lead Sadie. Generally she could lead Emmy Lou, not always.
But all the while slowly a conviction was taking hold in Emmy Lou’s mind. It was a conviction concerning Miss Lizzie.
Near Emmy Lou in the Fourth Reader room sat a little girl named Lisa—Lisa Schmit. Once Emmy Lou had seen Lisa in a doorway—a store doorway hung with festoons of linked sausage. Lisa had told Emmy Lou it was her papa’s grocery store.
One day the air of the Fourth Reader room seemed unpleasantly freighted. As the stove grew hotter, the unpleasantness grew assertive.
Forty little girls were bending over their slates. It was problems. It had been Digits, Integral Numbers, Tables, Rudiments, according to the teacher, in one’s upward course from the Primer, but now it was Problems, though in its nature it was always the same, as complicated as in its name it was varied.
The air was most unpleasant. It took the mind off the finding of the Greatest Common Divisor.
The call-bell on Miss Lizzie’s desk dinged. The suddenness and the emphasis of the ding told on unexpected nerves, but it brought the Fourth Reader class up erect.
“File by the platform in order, bringing your lunch.”