"But they are books you get out of your Sunday school library, and don't count anyway because you say you don't like them," from Hattie.
This lamentable and unhappy knowledge of good and evil was forced on Emmy Lou when in the ascending scale of years she simultaneously reached her ninth birthday, the Fourth Reader, and the estate of bridesmaid to Aunt Katie.
Life from this eminence appeared broad-spread and beautiful, and diversified by variant paths within the sweep of a far horizon until now never suspected. But Hattie, youthful Virgil to her youthful Dante, permitted personally conducted excursions only, and these along a somewhat monotonous because strait and narrow path—all other roads, whether devious or parallel, flower-bedecked or somber, ascending or descending, leading but to questionable ends.
The first travelers pointed out by Hattie as trudging these alien roads were Lisa, Yetta, and Mittie, as has been shown. The second group journeying on an upland, flowery way paralleling the strait and narrow path in general direction, at least, were Alice, Rosalie, and Amanthus. Charming names! Enchanting figures!
School opened early in September. Alice, Rosalie, and Amanthus, who were newcomers, were given desks across the aisle from Emmy Lou. Alice, seeing her earnestly scrubbing her desk each morning before school and arranging it for the day, laughed in her eyes. Amanthus, seeing her test her pen and try her ink for the coming ordeal of copybook, laughed in her dimple. And Rosalie, asking her what she was hunting on the outspread page of her geography, laughed aloud when Emmy Lou replied that it was Timbuctoo, and that she could find it easier if she knew whether it was a country, or a mountain, or a river. On which they all came across the aisle and hugged her.
"You said in class that the plural of footnote was feetnotes," said Rosalie.
"You said, when the teacher held you down about the spelling in your composition, that a dog didn't have fore-feet but four feet," said Amanthus.
"It's so funny and so dear," said Alice.
"What?" asked Emmy Lou.
"You," said Amanthus, and they all kissed her.