"Why should that monstrous bulk of elephant have trumpeted just then?""Why should that monstrous bulk of elephant have trumpeted just then?"
For Emmy Lou's hand some time since hadbrought forth for comfort from her pocket the blue tickets which were her own. That hand closed on them at the question now. She'd just seen her basket go!
"Arethey circus tickets? Sure? Lemme see them? Aw, what you scared of, lettin' me see 'em in my hand?"
Emmy Lou did not know just what. The ways of a picnic and those attending were new to her, but what she had learned discouraged confidence. Her hand and the tickets in it went behind her.
"Where'd she get 'em?" the boy asked now of Albert Eddie, arriving with his bucket for more water.
He set the bucket down by the barrel and joined the group.
"Do you s'pose they are really hers?" was the query put to him as he got there.
Emmy Lou knew Albert Eddie, had known him for a long time as time is measured atseven years. He looked after her on the way to and from Sunday school even though he did it at Sarah's bidding, whereas Maud forgot her. Moreover, he had not wanted to come to the picnic, and, bond firmly established between them, neither had she. She surrendered her tickets into his hands to be inspected. She even credentialed them. The others had doubted them! "They're mine. My Uncle Charlie said so. To take anybody I wanted to take if I hadn't had to come here!"
Her tickets! Five by actual count and actual touch! To do what she pleased with! This plump little girl with the elastic of her hat under her chin, sitting alone at the picnic on a stone!
The conversation in the group became choric and to some extent Delphic, Emmy Lou, with her eyes on the tickets in Albert Eddie's hands, alone excluded.
"Aw, we could!"
"Follow the track!"
"Could she do it?"
"'Tain't so far she couldn't if we start now."
Four little boys, nearing nine, Albert Eddie, Logan, John, and Wharton, made Machiavellian through longing, turned to this little girl on her stone and made court to her as they knew how.
"Aw, you ask her! You know her!" from Logan to Albert Eddie.
Albert Eddie cleared his throat. He'd carried the basket. He'd carried the wood. He'd carried the water. He was bitter to desperate lengths, indeed, and in the rebound no good and obedient little boy at all but one gloriously afloat on seas of dire and reckless abandon.
"We'll take you to the circus, these boys and me, and let you see everything, if you want us to," with adiablerieof cunning so appalling and so convicting in its readiness he knew he must falter if he stopped to consider it.
"'Tain't as if we hadn't been before, every one of us," from Logan, with that yet greater cunning of the practiced and the artist, indifference; "but we wouldn't mind taking you."
"I been twice," from Wharton mightily.
"I been once, last year," from Albert Eddie.
"I been twice inoneyear," from John, "here at home and when I went to visit my grandmother."
"I been twice to one show," from Logan, eclipsing them all. "One day with one uncle, and the next day with another!"
And Emmy Lou never had been at all! The tickets, most cunning play of all, had been put back in her own hand.
"Old clown he threw his hat up, turned a handspring, and come up and caught it on his head," from Wharton. "We'll show you the clown."
"—rode one horse standing and driving five and kissed her hand every time she came by—"Logan, forgetting his cue and his cunning, was saying to Albert Eddie and John.
"—picks out the letters, that dog does, and spells his own name—" John, forgetting his cue and his cunning, was saying to Albert Eddie and Logan.
Emmy Lou moved on her stone.
"—rolls in a big keg, that elephant does, and turns it up and sits down on it. We'll show you the elephant too," Wharton, faithful to his cue, was saying to her.
Emmy Lou stood up. She handed the tickets to whoever might be to take charge of them. She put her hand in Albert Eddie's. "I didn't want to come to the picnic and not go to the circus," she said.
They were grateful and solicitous little boys. They hurried her unduly, perhaps, in getting her out of the grounds, but once upon the safer territory of road beside the track they were mindful of her.
"I'll take her by one hand," said Logan to Albert Eddie, "and you keep hold of her by the other hand, because she knows you."
Whatever that hot, dusty, shadeless, that appalling stretch of country road meant to Emmy Lou, she never afterward referred to it. But then there were reasons making silence more natural on her part.
Yet she saw the circus! Emmy Lou saw the circus! Come what might, she had that!
What that they arrived at the circus entrance dinnerless, dust-laden, and, but for a stop along the way at a pump and trough, thirsty!
What that the man sitting at the mouth of the passage between canvas walls, to whom the tickets were handed, eyed them, four unattended little boys taking marked care of one little girl in their midst—since he let them by and in!
Sawdust, orange-peel, flaring gas jets, camel, lions, big pussy-tiger, Oh, glorious andunmatchable blend of circus aroma! Oh, vast circling sweep and reach of seats and faces, with four little boys guarding one little girl in their midst, wandering along looking for places!
Oh, blare of brass, Oh, fanfare of trumpets, Oh, triumphant entry of all hitherto but dimly sensed and hauntingly visioned, color, pageant, rhythm, triumph, glory, heretofore lost as they came, but now palpable, tangible, and existent!
Oh, pitiful, a bit terrifying, white-faced clown! The butt, the mock, the bear-all! Emmy Lou does not laugh at the clown! Because she pities him and is sorry for him, her heart goes out to him instead! And she trembles for Nella as her horse urged by the snapping, menacing whip sweeps by faster and even faster—and she cries out when at the crash of the kettle-drums, Zephine leaps——
"But I didn't see the elephant like I did thelions and the camel and the tiger," she tells Logan and Albert Eddie and the others. Nor had she. The elephant had gone to take his place in the triumphal entry when Emmy Lou and her four cicerones, in their progress through the animal tent before the program, reached his roped-in inclosure.
And so they made their way back to him through the surging crowd as they went out, four solicitous little boys conducting Emmy Lou. Made their way as near as might be, then pushed her through the row of spectators in front of them to the rope.
"He picks little children up and puts them in his trunk," she was saying as one fascinated by the very awfulness of that she dwelt on, as they squeezed her through.
Why should that monstrous bulk of elephant have trumpeted just then—as Emmy Lou emerged at the rope—have flung his trunk out in all the lordly condescension of a mightyone willing to stoop, in the accustomed quest of peanuts?
Aunt Louise, returning from a futile trip to the church corner to meet Emmy Lou, had just explained that the picnic had not returned, being delayed, so rumor said, by the search for five missing children, when Bob walked in bringing a dust-laden Emmy Lou.
"Came on her at the circus?" from Aunt Cordelia incredulously.
"In the animal tent roun' there whar thet elephunt is," Bobdiagrammed.
Emmy Lou's face, bearing marks of recent agitation, showed agitation anew.
"Good work," from Uncle Charlie, just arrived himself. "Who was with her?"
"Some li'l boys, she says. She warn't with nobody when I come on her runnin' f'om thet elephunt toward me without knowin' it, an' screamin'."
Emmy Lou's agitation broke into speech mingled with tears. "He picks little children up and puts them in his trunk. And he tried to pick up me!"
Along in the night Emmy Lou awaking found that she wanted a drink. These warm June nights the water bottle and tumbler sat on the sill of the open window in Aunt Cordelia's room, which meant that Emmy Lou must get out of bed and patter in there to them.
Reaching the window—was Emmy Lou in her nightgown and her bare feet really there and awake or in her bed in reality and direly dreaming?
Was it so or not so, this looming, swinging, menacing bulk, palpably after her again, approaching adown the silent, dusky street?
Seven years old and a little, little girl, EmmyLou fled to Aunt Cordelia's bedside and tugged at her arm to get her awake.
Aunt Cordelia, taking her into her bed, soothed her, her hand massaging up and down back, shoulders, little thighs, comfortingly enough, even the while she scolds. She takes it without question that Emmy Lou has been dreaming.
"It is what comes of being a naughty little girl again. We never sleep well when our conscience is uneasy."
Emmy Lou lay close. Conscience! Aunt Cordelia said so!
Nor did Aunt Cordelia dream, nor Emmy Lou suspect, that the monstrous, looming shape padding along the silent street beyond the open window with its broad sill was the circus elephant making his way to the railroad yard and his traveling car, the yard where the roundhouse bell even now made melancholy tolling in the night.
LIONS IN THE PATH
Emmy Loucame home at close of her first day in the Second Reader. "I sit with Hattie," she said.
"Who is she?" asked Aunt Katie.
"Where does she come from?" added Aunt Louise.
Emmy Lou was perplexed. Who is Hattie? In her pink-sprigged dress with her plaits tied behind her either ear? Breathing briskness and conviction? Why, Hattie isHattie. But how convey this to Aunt Katie?
And where does she come from? How does Emmy Lou know? Or how is she expected to know? The population of school, in common with the parallel world of Sunday school, hasno background other than school itself, but assembling out of the unknown and segregated into Primer Class, First Reader, Second Reader, even as Sunday school is segregated into Infant Class, Big Room, and Bible Class, performs its functions and disperses. Where, then, does Hattie come from?
"She came out of the cloakroom, and she asked me to sit with her."
Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise laughed. They have laughed at Emmy Lou before in this sense and so have others. She has said "Madam and Eve" happily and unsuspectingly all these years until Aunt Katie discovered it and not only laughed buttold, and Aunt Louise, in whose person and carriage Emmy Lou takes pride, was a "blunette" until she found it out and laughed and told.
A little boy at school as long ago as last year laughed and told a boy named Billy who Emmy Lou had believed was her friend: "Ho,Teacher told her to wait there for the present, and she thinks it's a present," And at Sunday school a little girl laughed and told: "She thinks her nickel, that nickel in her hand, is going up to God."
In consequence of these betrayals of a heart too faithfully shown and a confidence too earnestly given, Emmy Lou is cautious now, laughter having become a lion in the path and ridicule a bear in the bush.
A picture hangs above Aunt Cordelia's mantelpiece. It has been there ever since Emmy Lou came to make her home with her aunties, but she was seven years old when she asked about it.
"Where is the man going?" she said then to Aunt Cordelia. "What will the lions do to him?"
"He is goingright onward. The lions in his path will turn him aside if they can."
"Correct," said Uncle Charlie overhearing."But the lions can't turn the trick. See the man's sword? And his buckler? The sword of his courage, and the buckler of the truth."
"Who is the man?" Emmy Lou wanted to know.
"The anxious pilgrim of all time," said Uncle Charlie.
But Aunt Cordelia, taking Emmy Lou on her lap, explained. "The man is any one of us—you, me, Uncle Charlie, your little friends Maud and Albert Eddie down at the corner, everybody. If we meet our lions as we should, with courage and the truth, they, nor anything, can prevent our going right onward."
"Oh, let the pilgrims, let the pilgrims then,Be vigilant and quit themselves like men!"
said Uncle Charlie.
And now laughter has become a lion in Emmy Lou's path. Will Hattie, her new friend, laugh at her? One can refrain from showingone's heart to Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, but in the world of school Emmy Lou needs a friend.
Omniscience at home is strangely wanting about this world of school, perhaps because Emmy Lou's aunties in their days went to establishments such as Mr. Parson's Select Academy, where the pupil is the thing, and school and teachers even a bit unduly glad to have and hold her, whereas Emmy Lou at her school has not found herself in the least the thing.
In saying she was to sit with Hattie she was implying that she was grateful indeed for the overture, whereas Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, taking it the other way, ask who Hattie is and where she comes from.
Aunt Katie said more: "We must find out something about her. Suppose you try?"
But Emmy Lou in one short day has divined all she needs to know, though she does not know how to tell this to Aunt Katie. Hattieis Hattie, life a foe to be overcome, this world the lists, and Hattie the challenged, her colors lowered or surrendered never, though the lance of her spirit be shivered seventy times seven and her helmet of conviction splintered.
And Emmy Lou?—who, as complement to this divination, loves Hattie?—Emmy Lou, what with over-anxious debate, what with caution, what with weight of evidence and its considering, is the anxious pilgrim of all time, lions in the path and bears in the bush.
Hurrying off to school the next morning to resume the grateful business of sharing a desk with this new friend, Emmy Lou found Hattie waiting for her at the gate even as she had said she would be, and life today, even as life yesterday from the initial moment of acquaintance with Hattie, became crowded at once, even jostled and elbowed with happening and information.
As the two took their places in the line formingat the sound of the school-bell, a little girl pushed in ahead of them where there was no place until she by crowding made one. But she did not care for that and showed it, her curls, which shone like Aunt Cordelia's copper hot-water jug, tossing themselves, and her skirts flaunting.
Hattie explained this. "She asked me to sit with her, that's why she's crowding us now. Her name is Sally Carter. But I choose, I don't take my friends." Her voice lowered and one gathered that following was an accusation, even an indictment. "She's the richest little girl in the class and wants you to know it. And she is an Episcopalian, too."
Emmy Lou felt anxious. Would Hattie laugh? "I don't know what an Episcopalian is."
But she seemed to regard the admission as commendable. "Sally's church gave an entertainment and called it for the orphans' fund,and she did the Highland Fling on the stage."
Emmy Lou had no idea what the Highland Fling was, either, but the line had reached the entrance doorway beyond which speech is forbidden. Except for this, must she have said she did not know? Or might she refrain from committing herself?
For there are different ways of meeting your lions. Emmy Lou knew two ways. Last year at school a little girl stood up in the aisle for no reason but a disposition to do so. Promptly and sharp came the rap of a pencil on the teacher's desk.
Lion in the path of the little girl! Lion of reprimand! But the little girl threw dust in the lion's eyes. "Oh, didn't the bell ring for everyone to stand?" she inquired. And sat down.
There is another way. Emmy Lou walked in on her friends the Dawkins one day, over the grocery at the corner, to find Albert Eddiein trouble. Possibly more than any person of Emmy Lou's acquaintance, he seemed an anxious pilgrim of all time too.
"Stand right where you are," Sarah his big sister was saying to him. "You've had something in your mouth again that you shouldn't. Don't tell me. Can't I smell it now I try?"
Albert Eddie was sniffling, which with a little boy is the first step on the road to crying. But he met his lion.
"It's cigars off the catalpa tree," he wept, and went on into the next room and to bed even as Sarah had forewarned him.
And so, as soon as Emmy Lou is free to speak, she must tell Hattie that she does not know what the Highland Fling is? Alas, that in the exigencies of sharing a desk with this person and incidentally fulfilling the functions of the Second Reader she forgot to do so!
At the school gate at the close of the dayHattie said, "Come go to the corner with me, and I'll show you where I live."
Go with Hattie? Her friend and more, her monitor and protector? Who the day through had steered her by the Charybdis of otherwise certain mistake, and past the Scylla of otherwise inevitable blunder? Go with her at her asking? Did rescued squire follow his protecting knight in fealty of gratitude? Did faithfulSanchofall in at heel at hisQuixote'sbidding? Emmy Lou, who always went hurrying home because she was bidden so to do, faced around today and went the other way.
Hattie lived in a brick house in a yard. Pausing at her gate she made a proposition. "If you could go to my Sunday school I can come by and get you."
"I go to Sunday school," said Emmy Lou.
Hattie was regretful but acquiescent. "Of course, if you go. I didn't know. I'll walkback with you and see where you live. I'm Presbyterian. What are you?"
Having no idea what Presbyterian was, how could Emmy Lou say in kind what she was?
A little girl just arrived at a neighboring gate, anhabituéof the Second Reader also, though Emmy Lou did not know her, joined Hattie and Emmy Lou as they passed. Hattie knew her and, such is the open sesame of one achieved friend, Emmy Lou found that she was to be considered as knowing her also. Her name was Sadie.
"I've just told her I'm Presbyterian," Hattie explained.
"I'm Methodist," said Sadie. "That's my church across the street."
Methodist is Sadie's church, and Presbyterian then is Hattie's? The names in both cases being abbreviated without doubt, and in seemlier phrase, St. Methodist and St. Presbyterian? Emmy Lou is on ground entirely familiarto her now, and she shifts her school-bag and her lunch-basket relievedly, for while the pilgrim must not fail to say she does not know when she does not, yet surely she may take advantage of a knowledge gained through finding out?
"I go to St. Simeon's P. E. Church," she stated. "It's 'round on Plum Street."
"What sort of church is that?" said Hattie.
"It's a stone church with a vine," said Emmy Lou, nor even under questioning could she give further information.
Reversing the idea of Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, Hattie would seem to be gradually finding out who and what Emmy Lou is? Friendship evidently must rest upon declared foundations. Emmy Lou goes to Sunday school and her church is on Plum Street. So far so good. But one and yet another lion faced, another and another spring up.
"Have you taken the pledge?" asks Hattie.
Emmy Lou in her time has taken the measles and also the chicken-pox, and more latterly the whooping-cough. And also given it. But the pledge? Has she taken it, and failed to recall it? And is it desirable or undesirable that she should have taken it?
"I've taken it," says Sadie in a tone that leaves no doubt that one should have taken it.
While the pilgrim must scorn to throw dust in the eyes through evasion, may she not hope for advantage through finding out again? Or must she definitely draw her sword and face this lion by saying that she does not know?
Bob, the house-boy, sent to hunt her, is the instrument of her respite. He brought up before the advancing group. Time was when he would have said, "Reckon you is done forgot whut happened to thet li'l girl whut didn't come straight home like she was tol'." But Emmy Lou is a big girl and Bob acknowledges it. "Reckon you is done forgot whut happensabout dessert for them that don't come on time to get it."
The implication dismaying even Hattie and Sadie, they took leave of Emmy Lou hastily.
"You can tell us about your pledge another time," Hattie called. "Maybe we will come around to see you this afternoon to get better acquainted."
Despite Bob's implication, Aunt Cordelia had saved some dessert for Emmy Lou. By diligent application to her dinner she even caught up with the others and thus achieved time for an inquiry. Was it on her mind that Hattie and Sadie might come around this afternoon?
"What's the pledge?"
"Which variety?" from Uncle Charlie. "It might be a toast."
"Or a pawn," said Aunt Louise.
"Or a surety," said Aunt Katie.
"And also an earnest," from Uncle Charlie. "Take your choice."
"Now stop mystifying her," said Aunt Cordelia. "There is altogether too much of it. I won't allow it. A pledge, Emmy Lou, such as you probably are thinking about, is a promise. I daresay some of the little boys you know have taken one. I hear it's quite the thing. Now, hurry. That's why I sent Bob after you. Dancing school has been changed from Saturday to Friday afternoon, and you have only half an hour to dress and get there. Aunt Katie is going with you."
"But," dismayed, "two little girls said maybe they would come to see me."
"Well, I'm sorry. I will see them for you if they come. Now, hurry."
And Emmy Lou accordingly hurried. For while the claims of school are all very well in Aunt Cordelia's regard, the claims of church, as Emmy Lou understands these claims, areimperative. And, moreover, while school centers itself and its activities within five days and its own four walls, St. Simeon's is the center of a clustering and revolving seven-day system.
On Monday Aunt Cordelia herself takes Emmy Lou to old Mrs. Angell's sewing class for the little girls of the Sunday school at the rectory next door to the church. On Thursday Aunt Louise takes her to the singing class for the children of the Sunday school at the organist's, across the street from the church. And her aunties share among them the duty of getting her twice a week to dancing school, taught by Miss Eustasia, the niece of Dr. Angell, at her home next door on the other side of St. Simeon's. The Church assembles its youthful populace here in force as Emmy Lou grasps it, old Mr. Pelot, who taught Miss Eustasia herself in her day and the mammas and papas of St. Simeon's in their day too, wieldinga bow and violin and being her assistant.
Dancing school! Emmy Lou, hurrying, is getting ready. School among schools, secular, sewing, singing, or Sunday, of endeavor, effort, and anxious perturbation! Aunt Cordelia does her best to help Emmy Lou along. She takes her in the parlor from time to time, after dinner, after supper, and, sitting down to the piano, strikes the chords. Aunt Cordelia's playing has a tinkling, running touch, and her tunes have an old-fashioned sound.
"One, two, three, start now—" Aunt Cordelia says. "Why didn't you start when I said? Katie, go away from the door, you and Louise both. You have laughed at her dancing, and she won't do a thing while you are here."
Then again to the endeavor.One, two, three,one, two, three, alike the chant and hope and stay of dancing. Emmy Lou starts right; she is sure that her right foot leads out on time:but the difficulty is, the while she pantingly counts, to bring up the left foot on the moment.
Uncle Charlie stops in the parlor doorway while he lights a cigar before returning downtown. "We might think the left foot was faithful to the Church and only the right given over to the World, but that Eustasia plys her art in the shadow of St. Simeon's."
One foot to the Church and the other to the World? What does Uncle Charlie mean? Are aspersions to be cast on dancing by other than its victims? Or can it be that Uncle Charlie, too, like Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, is laughing at her?
But today Emmy Lou and Aunt Katie go hurrying off to dancing school, Emmy Lou in her Sunday dress devoted to St. Simeon's functions, carrying her slippers in their bag.
Miss Eustasia's house is old and shabby.She lives here with her mother who is Dr. Angell's sister, a lady who crosses her hands resignedly and says to the mammas and visitors at dancing school, "Eustasia was not brought up to this; Eustasia was raised with a right to the best."
Aunt Katie and Emmy Lou hurry in the front door. Miss Eustasia in the long parlor on one side of the hall is hurrying here and hurrying there, a little frown of bother and of earnestness between her brows, marshalling some classes into line, whirling others about face to face in couples. And old Mr. Pelot, tall and thin, with a grand manner and an arched nose, is rapping with his bow on the mantel and calling for order. Mammas and visitors are in place along the wall, and Dr. Angell, who sometimes, as now, comes over from the rectory to look on, beams and takes off his glasses and rubs them, and, putting them on, beams again.
All of which is as it should be, as Emmy Lou understands it; and Miss Eustasia, born and baptized, brought up and confirmed, as it were, in the church next door, had to have something to do. And St. Simeon's, gathering its children together, offered her this, and at the same time provided for Mr. Pelot, who, being on everybody's mind in his old age, also had to have something to do.
And St. Simeon's did itself proud. As Aunt Katie and Emmy Lou came in, its Infant Class, as Emmy Lou from long association knew it, was out on the floor taking its first position, while St. Simeon's Big Room, resolved into skirts, sashes, and curls, or neat shoes, smooth stockings, knickerbockers, jackets, broad collars, and ties, was waiting its turn to flutter lightly to places, or, bowing stiffly, go into duty stoutly. After which its Bible Class, now standing about in confidential pairs, would go through their new figurein the cotillion sedately. Or so it was that Emmy Lou coming in in her Sunday dress and her slippers understood it.
"Just in time," said Miss Eustasia to her briefly. "Get into line."
The Infant Class withdrawing to get its breath, Emmy Lou finds herself between Logan and Wharton in a newly forming line stretching across the room. She is glad, because they are her friends, having gone with her on occasion to the circus, and she can ask them about the pledge.
To each nature of school its vernacular: rudiments and digits, head and foot, medals and deportment, to the secular; bias and hem, whipping and backstitch, to the sewing; chorus and refrain, louder please, now softer, to the singing; sponsors, catechism, texts, to the Sunday; and Miss Eustasia now is speaking to the class in the vernacular of the dancing school.
"No, no, no," in discouragement of all attempts at conversation. "Eyes in front, everybody, on me, and take the first position. Now, right hand on right hip, so. Left hand lifted above left shoulder, so. Right foot out, heel first——"
"What do you call it?" from Logan, desperate with his efforts. "Have we had it before? What's its name?"
"Its name," said Miss Eustasia severely, "is the Highland Fling."
Emmy Lou found a moment before dispersal to interview Logan and Wharton. "What's the pledge? Have you taken it?"
"No, I haven't," said Logan, not so much curt as embittered, so one gathered, by his share in the afternoon.
Wharton was more explicit. "We don't have pledges at our Sunday school."
Emmy Lou knew another little boy, Albert Eddie. She went down to the corner the nextmorning to see him. If the truth be told, she still preferred the snugness of life over a grocery to a house in a yard.
Mrs. Dawkins, on what she called a pinch, went down in the grocery and helped. She was there this Saturday morning, and Maud with her. Sarah in the kitchen upstairs was mixing the Saturday baking in a crock, and Albert Eddie, being punished, was in a corner on a stool.
Politeness dictating that the person in durance be ignored, under these circumstances Emmy Lou immediately addressed herself to Sarah.
"What's the pledge? Do you know anybody who's taken it?"
Sarah brought Albert Eddie right into it, stool, corner, and all. "Albert Eddie can tell you for he's just taken one. He's been a bad boy again, and it wasn't catalpa cigars this time either. And after he's been warned. I'vemade him promise now. Albert Eddie, turn round here and say your pledge."
Monday morning found Emmy Lou at the school gate betimes. "I've got my pledge now," she told Hattie and Sadie eagerly, as together they arrived.
"Of course you have," from Hattie commendingly, "I knew you must have taken one. Say yours."
Emmy Lou said hers:
"I'll never use tobacco, no,It is a filthy weed,I'll never put it in my mouth——"
She stopped. As could be seen in the horrified faces of Hattie and Sadie, something was wrong.
"They taught you that at your Sunday school?" from Hattie.
"You, a little girl——?" from Sadie.
Whereupon the pilgrim, the pilgrim Emmy Lou, saw it all, saw that she had but endeavored to throw dust into eyes, beginning with her own.
"I didn't get my pledge at Sunday school, I got it from a little boy. I asked him and he taught it to me. We don't have pledges at my Sunday school."
"We went to see you on Friday like we said, and you were out," said Hattie severely.
"They changed the day and I had to go," from Emmy Lou. "I was at dancing school."
"Dancing school? Your Sunday school doesn't have pledges and you go to dancing school? Your church lets you go? Like Sally Carter's? And you didn't tell us?"
"My church might give up pledges if it had to," said Sadie, "but its foot is down on dancing."
Yet Hattie would be fair. "Your ministerknows? What sort of dancing? What did you dance on Friday?"
"Our minister was there. It is the Sunday school that dances. We danced the Highland Fling."
The school bell rang.
"Well," said Hattie as she turned to go, "I'm Presbyterian."
Sadie bore witness as she turned to follow. "And I'm Methodist."
Emmy Lou lifted her buckler and drew her sword. Never dust in the eyes again. For she knew now what she was over and above being a St. Simeonite, having asked Aunt Cordelia. In this company it bore not only the odium of disapproval and the hall-mark of condemnation, but from the qualifying term applied to it by Aunt Cordelia would seem to merit both.
"I'm a low church Episcopalian," said Emmy Lou, the pilgrim, stoutly if wretchedly.
When Emmy Lou reached home that day Aunt Katie brought up an old matter. "Aunt Cordelia rather likes the looks of the little girl named Hattie who came here. So I suppose it is all right for you to go on sitting with her. What have you found out about her?"
What Emmy Lou would have liked to find out was, would Hattie go on sitting with her? But how make those things clear to Aunt Katie?
"Charlie," said Aunt Cordelia to her brother that night, "what on earth do children mean? Emmy Lou as she was getting ready for bed asked me why Hattie's church and Sadie's church have the pledge and hers has the Highland Fling? It isn't possible that she has confused dancing and Sunday school?"
Uncle Charlie stared at his sister, then his shout rang to heaven.
THE IMPERFECT OFFICES OF PRAYER
RecruitingSunday occurred at Emmy Lou's Sunday school the winter she was eight. The change to this nature of thing was sudden. Hitherto when Hattie, her best friend, who was Presbyterian, spoke of Rally Day, or Sadie, her next best friend, who was Methodist, spoke of Canvassing Day, Emmy Lou of St. Simeon's refrained from dwelling on Septuagesima, or Sexagesima, or Quinquagesima Sunday, as the case might be, for fear it appear to savor of the elect. As, of course, if one has been brought up in St. Simeon's, and by Aunt Cordelia, one has begun to feel it does.
Hattie and Sadie, on the contrary, full ofthe business and zeal of Rally Day and Canvassing Sunday, looked with pity on Emmy Lou and St. Simeon's, and at thought of Quinquagesima and such kindred Sundays shook their heads. Which is as it should be, too.
For, while there is one common world of everyday school in the firmament of the week, drawing the Emmy Lous and Hatties and Sadies into the fold of its common enterprise and common fellowship, there are varying worlds in the firmament of Sundays, withdrawing the Emmy Lous and Hatties and Sadies into the differing folds of rival enterprises, Hattie to the First Presbyterian Church North, Sadie to the Second Avenue M. E. Church South, and Emmy Lou with no status or bias as to pole at all, if we except polemics, to St. Simeon's P. E.
And each one within her fold is so convinced her fold is the only fold, it is her part to make all others feel this. Which is as it should be,too. And, as Hattie pointed out when Sadie got worsted in being made to feel it and cried, is only the measure of each one's proper Christian zeal!
And Hattie, being full of data about her Rally Day, and Sadie, being full of grace from her Canvassing Day, were equipped at seemingly every point for making another feel it. Whereas when Sadie asked Emmy Lou what Quinquagesima or fifty days before Easter had to do with saving souls, and Hattie asked her to spell it, Quinquagesima not only died on her lips but she and it seemed indefensibly and reprehensibly in the wrong. Which Emmy Lou endeavored to remember was but a measure of Christian zeal again.
And now St. Simeon's, awakening to its needs in such zeal, was to have, not a Rally nor yet a Canvassing, but a Recruiting Sunday. For every Sunday school with any zeal whatever has a nomenclature of its own and lookswith pity and contumely on the nomenclature of any other Sunday school. So that Emmy Lou heard with a shock of incredulity that what she knew as the Infant Class was spoken of by Hattie as the Primary, and by Sadie as the Beginners.
But this department of Sunday school, whatever its designation, belongs to the early stages of faith. Emmy Lou is in the Big Room, now, and here has heard about St. Simeon's Recruiting Sunday.
Mr. Glidden, the superintendent, announced it. He was a black-haired, slim, brisk young man. Emmy Lou knew him well. She liked Mr. Glidden. He came to see Aunt Louise, and admired her. Week days he was a young man who was going to do credit to his father and mother. Aunt Cordelia said so. Sundays, if he let his Christian zeal carry him too far, his betters at St. Simeon's would have to call him down. Uncle Charlie who was a wardenat St. Simeon's said so, curtly, in a way most disturbing.
In announcing Recruiting Sunday, Mr. Glidden spoke with feeling. "In the business-run world of today," he told his Sunday school, "St. Simeon's must look at things in a business way. What with Rally Day and Canvassing Day in the other Sunday schools, St. Simeon's stands no chance. Emulation must be met with emulation. Let St. Simeon's get out and work. And while it works,"—Mr. Glidden colored; he was young—"let it not forget it shall be its Superintendent's earnest and also daily prayer that it be permitted to bring even the least of these into the fold."
Furthermore, there should be inducements. "For every new scholar brought in," said Mr. Glidden, "there shall be an emblazoned card. For every five emblazoned cards there shall be a prize. Cards and prizes I shall take pleasure in giving out of my own pocket."
In the light of after events, as Emmy Lou grasped them, the weakness in the affair lay in Mr. Glidden's failure sufficiently to safeguard his prayer.
Emmy Lou had considerable data about prayer, gathered from her two friends, Hattie being given to data, and Sadie being given to prayer. As Hattie expounded prayer as exemplified through Sadie, one fact stands paramount. You should be specifically certain in both what you ask and how you ask it. For the answer can be an answer and yet be calamitous too. Hattie used the present disturbing case with Sadie for her proof.
Sadie and her brother decided they wanted a little sister, and would pray for one. They did pray, fervently and trustfully, being Methodists, as Hattie pointed out, night after night, each beside her or his little white bed. And each was answered. It was twin little sisters. Since when, Sadie was almost as good aslost to her two friends, through having to hold one little sister while her mother held the other.
"You've got to make what you want clear," Hattie argued. "They both prayed for a little sister at the same time. If they'd prayed, Sadie one night, and Anselm the next, or if they'd said it was the same little sister, they wouldn't 'a' had a double answer and so been oversupplied."
Sadie was torn with conflict over it herself. Her little sisters weren't justified to her yet, but she wasn't going to admit they might not still be, though the strain on her Christian zeal was great.
For at Sadie's Sunday school you did not get a prize for the new scholars you brought in on Canvassing Day. You got a prize when the next Canvassing Day came around, if they were still there. And Canvassing Day was nearly here again, and her scholars were failing her.
"It's no easy thing to be a Methodist," she said in one of her moments of respite from a little sister, talking about it with pride through her gloom. "You work for all you get! When I could look my scholars up every week, and go by for 'em with Tom and the barouche when the weather was bad, I had them there for roll-call every Sunday. But now that I have to hold my little sisters and we haven't Tom or the barouche either because on account of my little sisters we can't afford them, they've backslid and dropped out."
Hattie had data as to that, too. "You needn't be so bitter about it, Sadie. I know you mean me! You went around and picked your scholars up anywhere you could find 'em, and I did too. It wasn't as if any one of 'em had a call to your Sunday school. Or as if they had a conviction. Except Mamie Sessums whose conviction took her away."
Sadie spoke even more bitterly. "Youneedn't count on Mamie. Because she had had a conviction that took her away from where she was, I counted on her the most of any of mine."
Hattie was positive. "But the conviction she has now took her away from yours. Her mother thinks there is too much about falling from grace at your Sunday school; she doesn't think it nice for little girls to hear so much about sin."
"She wouldn't have fallen from grace herself if I could have kept after her," from Sadie. "If I hadn't to hold my little sisters Mamie wouldn't be a backslider now. But my little sisters will be justified to me yet. I'm not going back on prayer."
It all emphasized the need of exceeding caution in prayer. Emmy Lou never had thought of it so. Time was, in fact, when, praying her "Gentle Jesus," at Aunt Cordelia's knee, she poured it out in Aunt Cordelia's lap, so tospeak, and left it there. Not that Aunt Cordelia had not made her understand that prayer goes to God. But that Aunt Cordelia who attended to everything else for her would see about getting it there.
But that was when Emmy Lou was a baby thing, and God the nebulous center of a more nebulous setting, with the kindly and cheery aspect as well as the ivory beard of—— Was it Dr. Angell, the rector of St. Simeon's? Or was there in the background of Emmy Lou's memory a yet more patriarchal face, reverent through benignity, with flowing ivory beard? A memory antedating her acquaintance with Dr. Angell? She was a big girl now, and God was not quite so nebulous nor quite so cheery. His ivory beard was longer, and in the midst ofnebulæfor support was a throne. But He yet could be depended on to be kindly. Aunt Cordelia was authority for that.
Her concept of prayer, too, had moved forward;prayer in her mind's eye now taking the form of little white cocked-hatbillets-douxwinging out of the postbox of the heart, and, like so many white doves, speeding up to the blue of Heaven. If God was not too busy, or too bothered, as grown people sometimes are on trying days, she even could fancy Him smiling pleasantly, if absently, as grown-up people do, when the cocked-hatbillets-doux, a sort of morning mail, were brought in to Him.
And so she was glad that Sadie was not going back on prayer, but was sure that her little sisters would be justified to her. Indeed, her heart had gone out to Sadie about it, and she had sent upbillets-douxof her own, and would send more, that the little sisters should be justified to her.
But from this new point of view supplied by Hattie, the wingingbillets-doux, as in the mind's eye they sailed upward, seemed to droopa little, weighted with the need of exceeding caution in prayer. And in the light of this revelation God in His aspect changed once more, again gaining in ivory beard and in throne what He again lost in cheer.
Long ago Aunt Cordelia used to rock her to sleep with a hymn. Emmy Lou had thought she knew its words, "Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face." Could she have reversed it? She had been known to do such things before. All this while had it been saying: "Behind a smiling providence, He hides a frowning face?"
At Emmy Lou's own home Aunt M'randy the cook, like Hattie, seemed to feel that prayer not sufficiently set around with safeguards and specifications could prove a boomerang. "Didn't I w'ar myse'f out with prayer to get rid er that no-account nigger house-boy Bob? To hev' thet prayer swing eroun' with this worse-account house-boy, Tom?"
Tom had gone to Hattie's house from Sadie's where they no longer could afford to have him, but he had not stayed there. He didn't get along with the cook. From there he came to be house-boy for Aunt Cordelia where Bob couldn't get along with the cook. Tom's idea of his importance apparently was in the number of places he had lived, and his qualifications he summed up in a phrase: "I ca'ies my good-will with me to the pussons I wuks foh."
The morning after Recruiting Sunday had been announced at St. Simeon's Sunday school, Uncle Charlie spoke of it at the breakfast table. He didn't seem to think much of it, and referred to it by another name, calling it an innovation.
Aunt Louise, on the contrary, defended it. She was teaching in the Sunday school now. "If everyone would show the energy and progressiveness of Mr. Glidden since he took theSunday school," she said with spirit, "St. Simeon's would soon look up."
"Glidden!" said Uncle Charlie. "Willie Glidden! Pshaw!"
"Why you speak of him in that tone I don't see, unless it is because you are determined to oppose every innovation he proposes."
"I oppose his innovations?" heatedly. "On the contrary I am in favor of giving him his way so he may hang himself in his innovations the sooner." And Uncle Charlie, getting up to go downtown, slammed the door.
Which would have been astounding, Uncle Charlie being jocular and not given to slamming doors, had it not to do with that one of the many worlds in the firmament of the Sundays, St. Simeon's. Emmy Lou was glad she understood these things better now. For persons altogether amiable in the affairs of the week-days to grow touchy and heated over the affairs of Sundays is only a measure of theirChristian zeal. There was comfort and reassurance in the knowledge. Time was when it would have frightened her to have Uncle Charlie slam the door, and made her choke over her waffle, and sent her down from her chair and round to Aunt Cordelia for comfort and reassurance.
Aunt Louise, addressing herself to Aunt Cordelia in her place behind the coffeepot, still further defended Mr. Glidden.
"He is even waking dear old Dr. Angell a bit. Not that we don't love Dr. Angell as he is, of course," hastily, "but he does lack progressiveness."
"Which may be why some of us do love him," said Aunt Cordelia tartly. Aunt Cordelia! Pleasant soul! Who rarely was known to sacrifice good temper even to Christian zeal! Emmy Lou choked on her waffle despite all! "But don't draw me into it! I decline to take sides."
"Which means, of course, that you've taken one," said Aunt Louise. "As if I could ever expect you to side with me against Brother Charlie."
"And if I do agree with Charlie, what then? To have the running of St. Simeon's passed over his head to Willie Glidden! The church our own grandfather gave the ground for! And he the senior warden who has run St. Simeon's his way for thirty faithful years!"
And Aunt Cordelia, getting up from behind the coffeepot and going toward the pantry to see about the ordering, broke forth into hymn, as was her way when ruffled. Emphatic hymn. And always the same hymn, too, Aunt Cordelia, like Uncle Charlie, objecting to innovations. Emmy Lou was long familiar with this hymn as barometer of Aunt Cordelia's state of being: