The three new little girls looked amused at everything, and exchanged glances; but they were not mean glances--not the kind of glances when little girls nudge each other and go off to whisper. Emmy Lou liked the new little girls. She could not keep from looking at them. They spread their skirts so easily when they sat down. There was something alluring about the little girls. At recess Emmy Lou waited near the door for them. They all went out together. After that they were friends. They lived on Emmy Lou's square. It was strange. But they had just come there to live. That explained it. "In the white house, the white house with the big yard," the tallest of the little girls explained. She was Alice. The others were her cousins. They were Rosalie and Amanthus. Such charming names. Emmy Lou was glad that she lived in the other white house on the square with the next biggest yard. She never had thought of it before, but now she was glad. Alice talked and Amanthus shook her curls back off her shoulders, and Rosalie wore a little blue locket hung on a golden chain. And Rosalie laughed. "Isn't it funny and dear?" asked Alice. "What?" said Emmy Lou. "The public school," said Alice. "Is it?" said Emmy Lou. And then they all laughed, and they hugged Emmy Lou, these three fluttering butterflies. And they told Emmy Lou she was funny and dear also. "We've never been before," said Alice. "But we are too far from the other school now," said Rosalie. "It was private school," said Amanthus. "And this is public school," said Alice. "It's very different," said Amanthus. "Oh, very," said Rosalie. Emmy Lou went and brought Hattie to know the little girls. All the year Emmy Lou was bringing Hattie to know the little girls. But Hattie did not seem to like the little girls as Emmy Lou did. She seemed to prefer Sadie when she could not have Emmy Lou alone. Hattie liked to lead. She could lead Sadie. Generally she could lead Emmy Lou, not always. But all the while slowly a conviction was taking hold in Emmy Lou's mind. It was a conviction concerning Miss Lizzie. Near Emmy Lou in the Fourth Reader room sat a little girl named Lisa--Lisa Schmit. Once Emmy Lou had seen Lisa in a doorway--a store doorway hung with festoons of linked sausage. Lisa had told Emmy Lou it was her papa's grocery store. One day the air of the Fourth Reader room seemed unpleasantly freighted. As the stove grew hotter, the unpleasantness grew assertive. Forty little girls were bending over their slates. It was problems. It had been Digits, Integral Numbers, Tables, Rudiments, according to the teacher, in one's upward course from the Primer, but now it was Problems, though in its nature it was always the same, as complicated as in its name it was varied. The air was most unpleasant. It took the mind off the finding of the Greatest Common Divisor.