“Take your—poetry, Emily,” she said.
Emily snatched the slate. No slate “rag” was handy but Emily gave the palm of her hand a fierce lick and one side of the slate was wiped off. Another lick—and the rest of the poem went. It had been disgraced—degraded—it must be blotted out of existence. To the end of her life Emily never forgot the pain and humiliation of that experience.
Miss Brownell laughed again.
“What a pity to obliterate such—poetry, Emily,” she said. “Suppose you do those sums now. They are not—poetry, but I am in this school to teach arithmetic and I am not here to teach the art of writing—poetry. Go to your own seat. Yes, Rhoda?”
For Rhoda Stuart was holding up her hand and snapping her fingers.
“Please, Miss Brownell,” she said, with distinct triumph in her tones, “Emily Starr has a whole bunch of poetry in her desk. She was reading it to Ilse Burnley this morning while you thought they were learning history.”
Perry Miller turned around and a delightful missile, compounded of chewed paper and known as a “spit pill,” flew across the room and struck Rhoda squarely in the face. But Miss Brownell was already at Emily’s desk, having reached it one jump before Emily herself.
“Don’t touch them—you have no right!” gasped Emily frantically.
But Miss Brownell had the “bunch of poetry” in her hands. She turned and walked up to the platform. Emily followed. Those poems were very dear to her. She had composed them during the various stormy recesses when it had been impossible to play out of doors and written them down on disreputable scraps of paper borrowed from her mates. She had meant to take them home that very evening and copy them on letter-bills. And now this horrible woman was going to read them to the whole jeering, giggling school.
But Miss Brownell realized that the time was too short for that. She had to content herself with reading over the titles, with some appropriate comments.