"Ah, now, Miss Jerusha, please do; that's a dear! Do just let her come over this once. I want her so dreadfully! P-p-please now."
No heart, unless made of double-refined cast iron, could resist that sweet little face and pleading "please now;" so Miss Jerusha, who liked little Emily (as indeed nobody could help doing), accordingly "pleased," and Emily, giving her a kiss—of which commodity that small individual had a large stock in trade, that like the widow's cruse of old, never diminished—put on Georgia's hat, and, nodding a smiling good-by to Miss Jerusha, marched her off in triumph.
"I am so glad, Georgia, you got so many prizes. Oh! I knew all along you were real clever. I should like to be clever, but I'm not one bit; but you, I guess you're going to be a genius, Georgia," said Emily, soberly.
"Nonsense, Em! A genius! I hope I shall never be anything half so dreadful."
"Dreadful! Why, Georgia!"
"Why, Emily!" said Georgia, mimicking her, "geniuses are a nuisance, I repeat—just as comets, or meteors, or eclipses, or anything out of the ordinary course are. People make a fuss about them and blacken their noses looking through smoked glass at them, and then they are gone in a twinkling, and not worth all the time that was wasted looking at them. I know it is sacrilege and high treason to say so, but that doesn't alter my opinion on the subject, and so don't trouble that small, anxious head of yours, my dear little snow-flake, about my being a genius again."
"I know who thinks so as well as I do," said Emily.
"Who?"
"Why, Richmond Wildair. Do you recollect the day, long ago, he first told you to go to school?"
"Yes."