Hattie chanced to be criticising Miss Beaton the next day, saying that she required too little of her classes. "But then she is more concerned getting ready to be married, I reckon," said Hattie. "Oh," said Emily, "Hattie!" She was shocked, almost hurt, with Hattie. "Don't you know about it?" she went on to explain. "She was going to be married and--he--he never came--he was dead." "No such thing," said Hattie. "He runs a feed store next my father's office. We've got cards. It's the day after school's out." "Then--which--" asked Emily falteringly. "Why, I heard that the first of the year," said Hattie. "It was Miss Carmichael that happened to." Emily went off to herself. She felt bitter and cross and disposed to blame Miss Beaton. She never wanted to see or to hear of Miss Beaton again. Upstairs she took from her Latin Grammar a pencilled paper, interlined and much erased, and tore it into bits--viciously little bits. Then she went and put them in the waste-paper basket. "You just feel it and then you write," Margaret had said, and Emily was feeling again, and deeply; later she wrote. It was gloomy, that which wrote itself on the paper, nor did it especially apply to the case in point, "but then," she reminded herself, bitterly recalling the faithlessness of Hattie, of Rosalie, of Miss Beaton, "it's True." She took it to Hattie from some feeling that she was mixed up in this thing. Hattie closed her Algebra, keeping her finger in the place, while she took the paper and looked at it. She did not seem impressed or otherwise, but read it aloud in a matter-of-fact tone: "A flower sprang from the earth one day And nodded and blew in a blithesome way, And the warm sun filled its cup! A careless hand broke it off and threw It idly down where it lately grew, And the same sun withered it up." "'Up,'" said Hattie, "what's the up for? You don't need it." "It's--it's for the rhyme," said Emily. "It's redundancy," said Hattie. VENUS OR MINERVA? It was gratifying to be attached to a name again. As a Freshman, personality had been lost in the High School by reason of overwhelming numbers. The under-world seems always to be over-populated and valued accordingly. But progress in the High School, by rigorous enforcement of the survival of the fittest, brings ultimately a chance for identity. Emmy Lou, a survivor, found a personality awaiting her in her Sophomore year. Henceforth she was to be Miss MacLauren. The year brought further distinction. Along in the term Miss MacLauren received notification that she had been elected to membership in the Platonian Society. "On account of recognised literary qualifications," the note set forth.