Behind, descended the grades of one’s achievements back to the A, B, C of things. One had once been a pygmy part of the Primer World on the first floor one’s self, and from there had gazed upward at the haloed beings peopling these same Fifth Reader Heights.
But Emmy Lou felt that somehow she was failing to experience the expected sense of dizzy height, or the joy of perquisite and privilege. To be sure, being a Big Girl, she found herself at recess, one of many, taking hands in long, undulating line, and, like the Assyrian, sweeping down on the fold, while the fold, in the shape of little girls, fled shrieking before the onslaught.
But there had been a time when Emmy Lou had been a little girl, and had fled, shrieking, herself. The memory kept her from quite enjoying the onslaught now, though of course a little girl of the under world is only a Primary and must be made to feel it. The privileged members of the Fifth Reader World are Intermediates.
They are other things, too. They are Episcopalians or Presbyterians or some other correspondingly polysyllabic thing, as the case may be. In this case each seemed to be a different thing. Hattie first called the attention of Emmy Lou to it.
The Fifth Reader members ate lunch in groups. Without knowing it, one was growing gregarious. And as becomes a higher social state, one passed one’s luncheon around.
“Hattie took Emmy Lou aside. 'It's their religion.'"