Emmy Lou hesitated at such consignment of Lisa to the limbo defined as wrong, but Hattie said she didn't dare hesitate. She even showed a disposition to take Emmy Lou's right of election into her keeping, saying if she felt this way about it she'd speak for her.
"No, we won't come into your game of prisoner's base," she told Lisa and Yetta at recess; "we're going to have a game of our own."
The contumely for the unfriendly act nevertheless fell on Emmy Lou who knew them best. "She's getting to be stuck up," Lisa said bitterly to her own group, with a jerk of her head toward Emmy Lou standing by Hattie. "She won't play with Yetta and me any more because our papa keeps a grocery."
"No such thing!" said Hattie. "She won't play with you because you go to picnics on Sunday."
Was this true? Or was it because Hattie had told her she must not play with them because they went to picnics on Sunday?
Hattie called this bringing of Lisa and Yetta to judgment "drawing the line." It was a painful process to the rejected. Lisa went off with her face suffused and Yetta who followed her was crying.
Next followed the case of Mittie Heinz whose mamma kept a little shop for general notions, a stock that Emmy Lou never had been able to identify, often as she had been there to buy needles or thread or cambric for Aunt Cordelia.
Mittie read her storybook on the steps of the shop on Sunday and Hattie explained to her that this made it impossible to include her in a game of catcher.
"Right's right, and wrong's wrong," she said. "If we are going to draw the line we have to draw it."
"I read my books on Sunday," expostulated Emmy Lou, for Mittie's startled face showed surprise as she turned away, and her eyes looked reproach at Emmy Lou.