The Big Girl was speaking her piece. I didn’t hear the words; the words of my own piece were saying themselves through my head; but I was aware that she stopped suddenly, that she looked as though she were trying to remember, that someone prompted her, that she went on. Suppose I should forget that way, before my father and mother and the friends of the school and Miss Miriam! It was a dreadful thought. I commenced again,—with my eyes shut,—
'Some children think that Christmas day
Should come two times a year.'
I went through my verses five times, while the Infant Class individually and collectively were holding up gilt cardboard bells and singing about them. I was beginning the sixth time,—
'Some children think,—'
when the superintendent read out,—
'The next number on the programme will be a recitation by Martha Smith.'
I had been expecting this announcement for four weeks, but now that it came, it gave me a queer feeling in my heart and stomach, half-fear, half-joy. Conscious only that I was actually taking part, I rose from my seat and made my way over the little girls in the pew, who scrunched up themselves and their dresses into a small space so that I might pass.
As I started down the aisle I thought I heard my name frantically called behind me; but not dreaming that any one would wish to have speech with a person about to speak a piece, I kept on down, way, way down to the platform, walking in a dim hot maze which smelled insistently of carnations.
But the poor carnations warned in vain. I ascended the platform steps with my reefer still buttoned tightly over my chest.
The reefer, as I have said, was dark blue, adorned with tarnished anchors, and outgrown. Being outgrown, it showed several inches of my thin little wrists, and being a reefer and tightly buttoned, it showed of my pink and white glory a little more than the hem.