Emmy Lou Part 25

Discussion waxed hot. A const.i.tution had been looked upon as invulnerable.

At last a Platonian arose. She called attention to the fact that time was pa.s.sing, and moved that the matter be tabled, and the Society proceed with the programme for the day.

Fiercer discussion ensued at this. "Business before pleasure," said a sententious member. "What's a programme to a matter concerning the Const.i.tution itself?"

The sponsor for the motion grew sarcastic. It developed later she was on the programme. Since the business of the Society was only useful as a means of conducting the programme, which was the primary object of the Society's being, she objected to the cla.s.sing of the programme as unimportant.

But the programme was postponed. When people begin to handle red tape, there is always a chance that they get enmeshed in its voluminous tangles.

It was dark when the Society adjourned. Platonians gave up dinner and Friday afternoons to the cause, but what Platonian doubted it being worth it?

Miss MacLauren and Hattie walked home together. At the corner they met a boy. It was the other boy whose name, as it chanced, was Chester. He joined them and they walked along together. Something made Miss MacLauren's cheek quite red; it was her blush when the boy joined them.

A few steps farther on, they met Miss Kilrain, the new teacher at the High School. It was just as Miss MacLauren was laughing an embarra.s.sed laugh to hide the blush. Miss Kilrain looked at them coldly, one was conscious of her disapproval.

Miss Kilrain's name had been up that very afternoon in the Society for honorary members.h.i.+p. All teachers were made honorary members.

With the Soph.o.m.ore year, High School pupils had met several new things.

Higher Education was one of them. They met it in the person of Miss Kilrain. It looked forbidding. She lowered her voice in speaking of it, and brought the words forth reverently, coupling it with another impressively uttered thing, which she styled Modern Methods.

Miss Kilrain walked mincingly on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet. She frequently called the attention of her cla.s.ses to this, which was superfluous, for so ostentatiously did she do her walking, one could not but be aware of some unnatural quality in her gait. But Miss Kilrain, that they might remember to do the same, reminded her cla.s.ses so often, they all took to walking on their heels. Human nature is contrary.

Miss Kilrain also breathed from her diaphragm, and urged her pupils to try the same.

"Don't you do it," Rosalie cautioned Emmy Lou. "Look at her waist."

Miss Kilrain came into the High School with some other new things--the new text-books.

There had been violent opposition to the new books, and as violent fight for them. The papers had been full of it, and Emmy Lou had read the particulars of it.

A Mr. Bryan had been in favour of the change. Emmy Lou remembered him, as a Princ.i.p.al, way back in the beginning of things. Mr. Bryan was quoted in the papers as saying:

"Modern methods are the oil that lubricates the wheels of progress."

Professor Koenig, who was opposed to the change, was Princ.i.p.al at the High School. He said that the text-books in use were standards, and that the Latin Series were cla.s.sics.

"Just what is a cla.s.sic?" Emmy Lou had asked, looking up from the paper.

Uncle Charlie had previously been reading it himself.

"Professor Koenig is one," said he.

Professor Koenig was little, his beard was grizzled, and the dome of his head was bald. He wore gold spectacles, and he didn't always hear, at which times he would bend his head sideways and peer through his gla.s.ses. "Hey?" Professor Koenig would say. But he knew, one felt that he knew, and that he was making his cla.s.ses know, too. One was conscious of something definite behind Professor Koenig's way of closing the book over one forefinger and tapping upon it with the other. It was a purpose.

What, then, did Uncle Charlie mean by calling Professor Koenig a cla.s.sic?

"Just what does it mean, exactly--cla.s.sic?" persisted Emmy Lou.

"That which we are apt to put on the shelf," said Uncle Charlie.

Oh--Emmy Lou had thought he was talking about Professor Koenig; he meant the text-books--she understood now, of course.

But the old books went and the new ones came, and Miss Kilrain came with them.

She came in mincingly on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet the opening day of school, and took her place on the rostrum of the chapel with The Faculty. Once one would have said with "the teachers," but in the High School one knew them as The Faculty. Miss Kilrain took her place with them, but she was not of them; the High School populace, gazing up from the groundling's point of view, in serried ranks below, felt that. It was as though The Faculty closed in upon themselves and left Miss Kilrain, with her Modern Methods, outside and alone.

But Miss Kilrain showed a proper spirit, and proceeded to form her intimacies elsewhere; Miss Kilrain grew quite intimate and friendly with certain of the girls.

And now her name had come up for honorary members.h.i.+p in the Platonian Society.

"We've always extended it to The Faculty," a member reminded them.

"Besides, she won't bother us," remarked another. "They never come."

Miss Kilrain was accorded the honour.

But she surprised them. She did come; she came tripping up on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet the very next Friday. They heard her deprecating little cough as she came up the stairs. When one was little, one had played "Let's pretend." But in the full illusion of the playing, if grown-up people had appeared, the play stopped--short.

It was like that, now--the silence.

"Oh," said Miss Kilrain, in the doorway, "go on, or I'll go away."

They went on lamely enough, but they never went on again. Miss Kilrain, ever after, went on for them, and perforce, they followed.

But to-day they went on. The secretary had been reading a communication.

It was from the Literary Society of the Boy's High School, proposing a debate between the two; it was signed by the secretary, who chanced to be a boy whose name was Chester.

Miss MacLauren, in spite of herself, grew red; she had been talking about the Platonians and their debates with him quite recently.

The effect of the note upon the Platonians was visible. A tremendous fluttering agitated the members. It was a proposition calculated to agitate them.

Rosalie was on that side opposed to the matter. Why was obvious, for Rosalie preferred to s.h.i.+ne before boys, and she would not s.h.i.+ne in debate.

Hattie was warmly in favour of it, for she was one who would s.h.i.+ne.

Miss MacLauren did not express herself, but when it came to the vote, Miss MacLauren said "Aye."

The "Ayes" had it.

Then, all at once, the Platonians became aware of Miss Kilrain, whom they had momentarily forgotten. Miss Kilrain was sitting in deprecating silence, and the Platonians had a sudden consciousness that it was the silence of disapproval. She sat with the air and the compressed lips of one who could say much, but since her opinion is not asked----

But just before adjournment Miss Kilrain's lips unclosed, as she arose apologetically and begged permission to address the chair. She then acknowledged her pleasure at the compliment of her members.h.i.+p, and expressed herself as gratified with the earnestness with which some of the members were regarding this voluntarily chosen opportunity for self-improvement. These she was sorry to see were in the minority; as for herself, she must express disapproval of the proposed Debate with the young gentlemen of the Male High School. It could but lead to frivolity and she was sorry to see so many in favour of it. Young ladies whose minds are given to boys and frivolity, are not the material of which to make a literary society.

As she spoke, Miss Kilrain looked steadily at two members sitting side by side. Both had voted for the Debate, and both had been seen by Miss Kilrain, one, at least, laughing frivolously, in company with--a boy.

The two members, moving uneasily beneath Miss Kilrain's gaze, were Hattie and Miss MacLauren.

Miss Kilrain then went on to say, that she had taught in another school, a school where the ideals of Higher Education were being realised by the use of Modern Methods. The spirit of this school had been Earnestness, and this spirit had found voice in a school paper. As a worthier field for the talent she recognised in the Platonian Society, Miss Kilrain now proposed this society start a paper, which should be the organ for the School.