One could not talk of these things except to Rosalie. Hattie would not understand. One was glad when Rosalie told them to Alice and Amanthus, but one could not tell one’s self.
And Miss Lizzie? Miss Lizzie had stepped all at once into her proper place. One had not understood before. One would not want Miss Lizzie different. It was right and natural to Miss Lizzie’s condition—which condition varied according to the page in the Book, for Miss Lizzie was the Cruel Step-mother, Miss Lizzie was the Wicked Fairy Godmother, Miss Lizzie was the Ogress, the wife of the terrible giant.
One told Rosalie. But Rosalie went even further. Miss Lizzie was the grim and terrible Ogress who dwelt in her lonely castle. True. The school-house was the castle of the Ogress. And the forty little girls in the Fourth Reader were the captives—the captive Princesses—kept by Miss Lizzie until certain tasks were performed.
One looked at Problems differently now. One saw Copy-books through a glamour. They were tasks, and each task done, the nearer release from Miss Lizzie.
Did one fail—?
Emmy Lou held her breath. Rosalie spoke softly: “The lady at the window—her finger at her lips—she had failed—”
Miss Lizzie was the Ogress, and the lady was the Princess—the captive Princess—waiting at the window for release.
And so one played one’s part. And so Emmy Lou and Rosalie moved and lived and dreamed in the glamour and the world of the Green and Gold Book.
It stayed in one’s desk—sometimes with Alice, or with Amanthus, sometimes with Rosalie. To-day it was with Emmy Lou.
One never read in school. But at recess, on the steps outside the big door, one read aloud in turn while the others ate their apples. And Hattie came, too, when she liked, and Sadie. But one carried the book home, that one might not be parted from it.