Rarity was a hopeless case. I had to school her in everything. Most likely she'd associated too much with that grandmother of hers in the aristocratic lace cap.
First off, she was afraid of everything: garden snakes, the woods, lightning and thunder, Turtles, bugs of all kinds, the peacocks that roamed around our house that my father used as watchdogs, and Granny Smith.
When Granny jokingly told her one day she was going to send Jaybird to scold her, she became terrified of Jaybird and all the other Demons of Granny's world.
I must confess that I added to her fears. I couldn't resist telling her about the legend of the woods surrounding Sweet Apple Acres.
"The ponies called it a dark and bloody land," I told her when we were lying awake in our beds one night. "Anything you can imagine lives in those woods."
"Like what?"
"Buffalo," I lied, "giant mammoths, runaways and timberwolves."
"Do the timberwolves ever come to the farm?"
"No, but they watch us all the time."
She half believed me and half knew I was just entertaining her. But her fear of the timberwolves was very real.
One day a pack of friendly wolves came through Sweet Apple Acres, right past our windows. I ran to find a Rarity, to show her how friendly they appeared, but couldn't find her. Her screams led me to the cellar, where I found her hidden in a corner, praying and sobbing, "Don't let them get me. Don't let them eat me, please."
I stopped feeding her fears after that. I didn't know that my tales of folklore, which I'd learned from Granny Smith, we're so effective.
There was no place in our family, Pa said, for ignorant mares. So in September, the best time of the year, the time when the sunshine was so mellow you wanted to drink it and the sky was so blue you wanted a dress of the same color, Rarity and I trudged three blocks up the hill to Reverend and Mrs. Ward's school at the corner of Second and Market.
"We're going to be late for school, Rarity," I said. "Let's go."
And we were late for school on the first day. Reverend Ward was not happy. And that's when we found out what emulation meant.
"It means looking up to and trying to imitate the virtues, the character, and the values of our Equestrian heroes," Reverend Ward said solemnly as we stood before him, waiting for permission to go to class. "It means trying to be better than you are. Now, so as you learn, you will both stay after school today and write a paper about who, in our history or in your family, you would like to emulate. Understood?"
I don't know who Rarity wrote about. Likely her grandmother with the lace cap. I wrote about how Grandma Bartlett's maternal grandmother had brought food and clothing to her husband at Valley Forge. How she frequently brought Provisions to the stallions and on one visit was greeted by Princess Celestia, who complimented her on her devotion to her husband and the cause.
When Reverend Ward read it, he scowled. "Where did you learn to write, Applejack? Who taught you such words and such penmanship?"
"Sometimes my own mother," I said. "Sometimes Grandma Bartlett. Or Auntie Apple Top or my older sisters." He harrumphed. "Good girl," he said begrudgingly. "Now go and sit and wait for your friend. I think somehow that she has not had the same education as you."
It wasn't writing in penmanship that I had to learn at Ward's. Some of the other fillies, like Basil Leaf and Trail Trotter and one of my own cousins from Apploosa, Gala Appleby, were as accomplished as I was. I did have to learn arithmetic, history, geography, Natural Science, French, and religion. Mrs. Ward taught astronomy and something I liked best. On the afternoons when her husband was busy talking about politics in the parlor with professors from Fillyvania, she would take us into the kitchen and teach us how to make puddings and custards, cakes and candy.
She also was responsible for having us join the young fillies' library in Ponyville and saw to it that we attended performances by every Children's Theatre Company. It was impossible not to like Mrs. Ward. Once a month, on a Saturday, she took us shopping and to sugarcube corner owned by Mr. and Mrs. Cake, whose swiss pastry cook made special meringues and macaroons for us.
I looked up to Mrs. Ward. Until the day she disappointed me.
Every May first the school erected a maypole in the square, and a filly was randomly selected to be crowned Queen of the May.
It was supposed to be the prettiest filly from our class. But Mrs. Ward was overly fond of Bible verses and required that we memorize them. The filly who memorized the most, she promised, would be Queen of the May.
"Even if she isn't from our class?" Came to question from Gala Appleby, my cousin from Apploosa, who boarded at the school.
"Yes," Mrs. Ward promised. "Remember, this is a school where respectability is all. Where discipline hasn't died and emulation doesn't sleep."
I had no desire to be Queen, but my Rarity wanted it so badly she swore she'd memorize the most Bible verses.
She enlisted me to listen to her. She memorized 1,373 verses. And before she reached 50, I begged off.
"Do you think I'll get it, Aj? Do you?"
"She said whoever memorizes the most verses will be crowned," I said quietly.
For one thing, the girls kept reminding Mrs. Ward that the contest had more to do with beauty than Bible verses. "It's supposed to be the prettiest filly," said swirly clay, who came from our class and was the next to prettiest girl in school.
The prettiest was Star Twist. But she was from another class.
"You all get to wear white and march in an elegant parade to Silver Mist's grove where a maypole will be erected. We want to make the best display for the school," was the response Mrs. Ward gave us.
Rarity recited her verses. Some of us attended the class where a weary Mrs. Ward and her husband, the leader, sat and listened approvingly.
One by one, those of us who attended excused ourselves and left.
There was no doubt about it. Rarity won, hooves down. But Mrs. Ward still wouldn't name her Queen of the May. And we all knew why, especially Rarity.
She simply wasn't pretty enough. The school needed a prettier filly. Before the day was over the fillies were split and arguing over who should represent the school as Queen.
Mrs. Ward was beside herself. "I can't have this contest turning my fillies against each other!" So she turned it into a civics lesson and had us vote for Queen of the May.
After some very secretive voting and whispering, the votes were counted. I knew most of the girls considered Rarity a Miss Prissy-boots for memorizing all those Bible verses. But the vote, as it turned out, was a tie. It was even, between Star Twist and Rarity.
"No more of this." Mrs. Ward gathered the little slips of paper with our votes on them and dumped them in a wastepaper basket.
"Star Twist will be Queen of the May," She announced.
To the cries of most, that Star came from a different class, she paid no heed.
"But you said whoever memorized the most Bible verses," Rarity complained.
"That isn't the point. The fighting that has occurred is distasteful to me. Perhaps next year the fillies from this class will learn to take this more in stride."
"She turned on us," Rarity sobbed to me later in our room. "I know I'm not that pretty but does pretty mean everything?"
I hadn't thought so. Until now. It was a distasteful lesson, but perhaps the most important one I was to learn at Ward's, the school where respectability and discipline lived. The school were emulation never slept. And virtue hadn't fled.
"An outsider from Mrs. Lilyfly's class has been selected for Queen of the May," the school newspaper reported. "Two young fillies held a canopy over her. Their names were Rarity and Applejack from Mrs. Wards class"
What the newspaper didn't say was that Rarity had tears in her eyes while she held her part of the canopy.