Emmy Lou, laboriously copying digits, looked up. The boy sitting in line in the next row of desks was making signs to her.She had noticed the little boy before. He was a square little boy, with a sprinkling of freckles over the bridge of the nose and a cheerful breadth of nostril. His teeth were wide apart, and his smile was broad and constant. Not that Emmy Lou could have told all this. She only knew that to her the knowledge of the little boy concerning the things peculiar to the Primer World seemed limitless.And now the little boy was beckoning Emmy Lou.

She did not know him, but neither did she know any of the seventy other little boys and girls making the Primer Class.