CHAPTER V THE RED-HAIRED GIRL--AND OTHERS The red-haired girl became very soon Carolyn May's _b te noire_. She had but recently moved into the neighbourhood and even the best of the Harlem blocks sometimes have a sprinkling of ill-bred children. The progeny of the vulgar is mixed in with well-behaved girls and boys both at school and at play. The red-haired girl, who was called "Sade" by her fellows, soon led the wilder children, both boys and girls, in all manner of mischief. She had the shrillest voice and the liveliest legs in the neighbourhood. She never, in fact, spoke otherwise than at top-register, and she travelled like a comet--at full speed all the time. More, she was like a comet because of that flaming aura of hair when she ran, was Sade. None of her mates called her "Comet" of course. Instead they dubbed her "Ginger," "Brick-top," "Redney," "Scarlet," or "Carrot-top." "Though," Carolyn May confessed to her father of this last, "I don't just see why they call her 'carrot-top.' Carrots aren't red at the top. I stopped at the vegetable stand on the corner and looked partic'lar. The tops are green. It's the bottom that is red." However, Carolyn May herself called Sade none of these names. In the first place she was much too polite and well taught. Again, she never spoke to the red-haired girl if she could help it, for Sade called Carolyn "stingy" and "stuck up" and made other derogatory remarks calculated to grieve a child like Carolyn May. Not that Carolyn was what is known among children as a "softie." She could take care of herself in most arguments. Children, if they attend the mixed public schools, have to fight their way, and she had battled up the educational heights as far as grade 3-A. She was looking forward now to her graduation in June from the 3-A grade to the 4-B. The girls she knew in the latter division of her school were almost grown up. At least, so Carolyn thought And she had peeped into some of the books they studied and really, they seemed so deep and "wonderful," that she feared her own father might have difficulty in understanding them. Naturally Carolyn was beloved of her teachers. Sometimes they did not altogether understand her. Her present teacher--a fluffy-haired, short-skirted, rattle-pated creature, herself more of a child than many of her pupils--delighted in saying that Carolyn was "so quaint." "And I don't think much of Miss Solomons calling me that," Carolyn said to her mother. "I looked 'quaint' up in papa's Big Dick, and I'm _not_ 'antique looking.' Antiques and horribles, are what they have in the Thanksgiving Day parades--and I ain't one." "Nor do you speak as though you were taught very well by Miss Solomons," was her mother's comment. "I am sure she does not tell you to say 'ain't.'"