“What’s the matter, honey girl?” Aunt Betts cried out, worried. “Where does it hurt? Let me get you some peppermint.”

Marcia looked on this tender scene with a cold scowl.

“She’s homesick,” she said flatly. “I knew she would be.”

Anything to get the biggest piece of pie! Anything to get rocked and petted and called honey girl! I wish I was an only child, thought Marcia bitterly; I wish I was an orphan with a different birthday every year and no home.

9

WHAT DOES THE DOWNSTAIRS smell like?” Lena asked, as if it was a riddle.

“Like chicken and pie in the kitchen,” Marcia answered after a moment’s intense pondering. “Like a churn in the parlor, and upstairs like a trunk.”

“Aunt Betts smells like a churn, too,” said Lena. “Uncle Louie smells like a barn, and Almedy smells like cows and strawberry patch.”

They sat at the edge of the cornfield in their blue overalls and straw hats, barefooted, contemplating the universe. Marcia was very happy because Lena had no one else to play with and was forced to make a chum of her sister. They made up secrets, and played school with the cornstalks as pupils. Marcia was allowed to play principal sometimes instead of always being just a teacher. They had boys’ rows and girls’ rows and named as many as they could manage. They had teachers’ pets, usually the smallest cornstalk in the first row, and then there were the big boys in the back who had to be scolded. They took turns being Miss Browne, the first-grade teacher, and Miss Sutton, the principal. Each stood at the head of the field four rows apart and conducted the corn in singing, numbers, spelling, and recess. The boy pet in Miss Browne’s class was called Maurice and the girl pet Violet. In Miss Sutton’s class there were other pets. Pets were always addressed in honeyed tones and permitted to run errands, and were lavishly praised.

“Violet, you may take this note to the principal in Room 42,” the teacher would say sweetly, and then, changing to a stern voice, add, “We will have a test in numbers while Violet is absent.”

Teaching also involved tiptoeing up and down the aisles and “catching” the pupils. Except for the pets, they were a cheating, whispering, disobedient lot, inclined to throw paper wads, chew gum, pass notes, and copy answers. Then the stern disciplinarian would come out. Whoever was Miss Browne would say in terrifying accents, “George Barnes, report at once to the principal’s office!” Miss Sutton would be prepared for this with a fierce lecture and a switch. Miss Browne would simulate a snivelling, abject George Barnes, and then a recess would be declared with the two teachers eating green apples, ostensibly brought to them by their devoted “pets.” This education in school technique as outlined by Lena made Marcia wild for September to come and real school to begin. On the other hand, the fun was all in being the teacher, and in the vast expanse of cornfield. Sometimes they would open up new schools in the rows further off—a third grade and a fifth, even though the courses were necessarily the same as the first grade, mixed with Sunday school. The corn stretched for miles, and it seemed a pity that only the section nearest the house could be educated. Uncle Louie said they could play in the corn but not to touch it, so when Almedy found Marcia whipping an unruly stalk for being truant, they almost had to give up the school, except Almedy finally promised not to tell if they wouldn’t tell about her fellow.