"Let the fiery, cloudypillow,"
sang Aunt Cordelia, flinging open the refrigerator door.
What it meant, a fiery, cloudy pillow, further than that Aunt Cordelia was outdone, was another thing. Emmy Lou always intended to ask, but the very fact that Aunt Cordelia only sang it when outdone prevented—that and the additional fact that when Aunt Cordelia was outdone Emmy Lou in distress of mind was undone.
Aunt Louise waited until Aunt Cordelia, who could be seen through the open doorway, straightened up from her inspection of the refrigerator. "Still," she said, "you won't object that I entered Emmy Lou's name at Sunday school yesterday as a recruiter? To try her best and get a prize?"
"I do object if there are tickets about it," emphatically. "You can take care of them for her if so. Willie Glidden has gone mad over tickets. What with her blue tickets forattendance one place in my bureau drawer, and her pink tickets for texts in another place, I won't be bothered further."
Yet what were Sunday schools without tickets? Emmy Lou getting down from the breakfast table, her still unfinished waffle abandoned for all time now, was dumbfounded. The one thing common to all Sunday schools was tickets. Though St. Simeon's under the accelerating progressiveness of Mr. Glidden had gone further, and whereas in ordinary your accumulated tickets for every sort of prowess only got you on the honor roll, a matter of names on a blackboard, Mr. Glidden had instituted what he called "a drawing card." At St. Simeon's, now, when your blue tickets for attendance numbered four—or five those months when the calendar played you false and ran in another Sunday—you carried these back and got the Bible in Colors, a picture at a time. And, incidentally, a color at a time, too. EmmyLou had a gratifying start in these, last month having achieved a magenta Daniel facing magenta lions in a magenta den, and this month adding a blue David with a blue sword cutting off the head of a not unreasonably bluer Goliath.
Pink tickets grow more slowly. Aunt Cordelia said that she could see to it that Emmy Lou got to Sunday school, but she could only do her best about the texts.
And she did do her best, Emmy Lou felt that she did.
"Say the text over on the way as you go," Aunt Cordelia had said to her as she started only yesterday. "That way you won't forget it before you get there."
And she had said it on the way, and had said it in the class, too, when called on by Miss Emerine.
Aunt Cordelia, plump and pleasant soul, had ways of her own, and Emmy Lou in wayseven beyond the plumpness was modeled on her. Aunt Cordelia said "were" as though it were spelled w-a-r-e, and Emmy Lou said it that way too.
"'And five ware wise, and five ware foolish,'" Emmy Lou told Miss Emerine.
"Five what?" Miss Emerine asked, which was unfortunate, this being what Emmy Lou had failed to remember.
It was Tom, the new house-boy, who really started Emmy Lou's recruiting for St. Simeon's. Hearing Aunt Louise ask her what she was doing about looking up new scholars, he volunteered his help.
"There's a li'l girl up the street whar I wuked once is thinkin' about changin' her Sunday school. I'll tell her to come aroun' an' see you."
The little girl came around promptly. It was Mamie Sessums. Emmy Lou knew her at week-day school. Far from being without aconviction, as Hattie had claimed, she now had two.
"My mother says Tom don't do anything but try to have her change my Sunday school. He lived with us before he went to live at Sadie's. But she says she's very glad to have me stop Hattie's and go with you. She didn't send me there to have the minister go by our house every day and never come in. Sadie's minister never came to call on her when I went to that Sunday school either. Do you have tickets at your Sunday school?"
Tickets were vindicated. Emmy Lou hurried upstairs and came back with all her trophies of this nature. Mamie seemed impressed by the Bible in Colors.
"You get them a picture at a time," Emmy Lou explained. "The first one is Adam in buff."
"Buff?" said Mamie doubtfully.
"Buff," repeated Emmy Lou firmly, sinceit was so, and not to be helped because Mamie didn't seem to like it. "My Uncle Charlie says so."
But it was only lack of familiarity with buff on the part of Mamie. As a prize, it impressed her. "I'll meet you on your church steps on Recruiting Sunday," she said.
After Mamie left, Emmy Lou went around to see Hattie. "Don't let it make you feel bad, taking Mamie away from me," Hattie told her. "I never expected anything else. When it's not a call, nor even a conviction, they're like as not to fail you on the very doorstep."
Sadie, at her window holding a little sister, waved to Emmy Lou and Hattie on the sidewalk. It was hard Sadie couldn't be with her friends any more. Emmy Lou sent up abillet-douxthat the little sisters might be justified to Sadie yet. Poor Sadie!
It was Tom who told Emmy Lou where togo for her next recruit. She had no idea it would be so easy. Sadie had worked hard for all she got but it didn't seem hard to Emmy Lou. "There's a li'l girl roun' on Plum Street where I wuked once, too. I'll speak to her, an' then you go roun' an' see her."
With Aunt Cordelia's permission, Emmy Lou went around. It proved that she knew this little girl at school, too. Her name was Sallie Carter. She was the richest little girl in the class and said so. Her curls shone like Aunt Cordelia's copper hot-water jug, and her skirts stood out and flaunted.
Sallie had convictions too. She had tried Sadie's Sunday school while her own church was being rebuilt, and she was just about through trying Hattie's.
"My mother thinks it's strange that Tom should be sending you after me too. Though he did live with us before he lived with any of you. She is surprised at some of the littlegirls who go to Sadie's Sunday school. And after she took me away they were the first little girls I met on the steps at Hattie's Sunday school. My mother says I'm a Carter on one side and a Cannon on the other, and everybody knows what that means. We're high church and you are low, but she's glad to have me go with you to St. Simeon's for a while and try it. Do you have tickets?"
Tickets and more, the Bible in Colors. Emmy Lou, explaining it, felt again she couldn't sufficiently uphold tickets to Aunt Cordelia.
The very next day Tom came to Aunt Cordelia and said if she would let Emmy Lou go with him to Mr. Schmit's when he went to get the ice, he knew of some other little girls who might be persuaded to go to her Sunday school. At Aunt Cordelia's word, Emmy Lou got her hat and joined Tom with his basket.
The accustomed place to get extra ice before Tom came was Mr. Dawkins' at the corner.But Tom wouldn't hear of going to Mr. Dawkins'. He argued about it until Aunt Cordelia gave in. He said he used to live with Mr. Schmit and drive his wagon.
Emmy Lou knew Mr. Schmit herself. Tom, after an inquiry at the counter, took her through the store to the back yard where he left her, a back yard full of boxes and crates and empty coops. Mr. Schmit's little girl Lisa was here with a baby brother in her arms, and another holding to her skirts, Yetta, her little sister, and Katie O'Brien from next door completing the group. Emmy Lou knew Lisa and Katie at school, too. Lisa's round cheeks were mottled and red, and the plaits hanging down her back were yellow. She did not seem overly glad to see Emmy Lou though she came forward.
"Well?" she said.
It made it hard to begin. And even after Emmy Lou had explained that she had cometo get them to go to Sunday school Lisa was unmoved.
"What do we want to go to Sunday school for? If we wanted to go to Sunday school we'd be going. We go to our grandfather's in the country now on Sundays. That way we get a ride in my papa's grocery wagon and we get to the country too."
"But if you would," urged Emmy Lou, "it would get me a prize."
"Sure I see," said Lisa. "I see that. But if Katie here and Yetta and me give up our ride out to my grandfather's, what do we get?"
"Oh!" said Emmy Lou, and hastened to set forth St. Simeon's largesse and system in tickets.
"What do we do to get the tickets?" asked Lisa. "We're Lutheran and Katie's Dominican. I don't know as we'd be allowed to. We wouldn't mind four Sundays and get a picture, would we, Katie?"
Katie, whose hair was black and whose eyes were blue, agreed.
"Sure, we'd like a picture. But I don't know as they'd let me at home. They said I shouldn't go to no more Sunday schools. The little girl who was sassy to us and said they didn't want us there was at two Sunday schools we've been to now."
"Still," said Lisa, "we'd like a picture. Which one is your Sunday school?"
When Emmy Lou rejoined Tom, she was overjoyed. "And they'll meet me on the church steps too. All of 'em will meet me on the church steps, Mamie and Sally and Lisa and Yetta and Katie."
And now it was Recruiting Sunday. But the shortness of manner with which Aunt Cordelia tied Emmy Lou's hair-ribbons was not on account of this, Recruiting Sunday for her having taken its place among the minor evils. Late on Saturday evening she had lost Tom,a case again of the house-boy not getting on with the cook.
"After I wore myse'f out with prayer to git rid of thet no-account Bob, to have thet prayer swing aroun' with this worse-account Tom," was Aunt M'randy's explanation of the disagreement.
"They want me over at Sadie's house tomorrow, anyway," Tom said with feeling as he went. "'Count of their grandfather walkin' in on 'em f'om Kansas City sudden there's big doin's hurried up about the twins. They're goin' to have a barouche roun' f'om the livery stable too, an' they want me to drive."
Then Tom became darkly cryptic. "I tol' you when I come, I ca'ies my goodwill with me to the pussons I wuks foh."
And now it was Sunday morning and no house-boy. "Charlie," said Aunt Cordelia to this person, "I wish you'd walk around to the Sunday school door with Emmy Lou. She'snever been so far alone. Louise is not ready, and she's to meet all those children on the church step where they'll be waiting for her, and thinks she ought to be early."
"Surely," said Uncle Charlie. "I'm glad to. I've an idea it's about time for Willie Glidden to be hanging himself in some of his innovations."
At the corner Uncle Charlie and Emmy Lou met Tom coming back towards Sadie's with the barouche from the livery stable. One felt Tom saw them, though he looked the other way.
At the second corner they met Sally Carter. Her curls shone like Aunt Cordelia's copper hot-water jug, and her skirts stood out and flaunted. She stopped when Emmy Lou stopped, but with reluctance, since it was palpable she was in a hurry.
"I've decided I didn't treat Sadie right. My name's still on her roll. Those little girlsmy mother didn't want me to associate with at the other Sunday schools were on your church steps, anyway, and she wouldn't want me to stay."
At the next corner they met Lisa and Yetta and Katie, scoured and braided and in their Sunday dresses. They didn't want to stop either, palpably being in even a greater hurry.
"As long as we're goin' to Sunday school we think well go back to the one we started from," said Lisa. "That sassy little girl our mothers said we shouldn't put up with was on your church steps anyhow, and was sassy to us some more."
At St. Simeon's itself they met Mamie. "I didn't want to wait, but I felt I ought to. I'm going back to Sadie's, and I'm late. Tom called to us here on the steps as he went by in the barouche, and said Sadie's little twin sisters were going to be baptized at her church right after Sunday school."
"Which," said Uncle Charlie the while his Emmy Lou swallowed tears, "hangs Willie Glidden neatly in his own innovations."
When Sadie and Hattie and Emmy Lou met at school the next day, Sadie's eyes were bright and her face shone. Why not? As she pointed out, her little sisters were justified to her, her erring scholars were returned, her grandfather said he'd see to it that theycouldafford to have Tom back and the barouche too, and it all went to prove the efficacy of prayer.
It would seem to. That is, of Sadie's prayer. Emmy Lou could see that. She indeed had sent upbillets-douxin Sadie's behalf herself. But it did not explain everything.
"Mr. Glidden at my Sunday school prayed too, that the least of these be brought into the fold."
Hattie forgot her own right to grievance in the joy of this additional data in support of her position. Had she not claimed that ananswer to prayer can be an answer and yet be calamitous too?
"Exactly," said Hattie. "'The least of these into the fold.' But he didn't say which fold!"
Did not say which fold? To God who knows everything? For Mr. Glidden meant his fold. Hattie, then, was right?
The concepts of Emmy Lou, eight years old, a big girl now, moved on again. Behind a smiling providence God hides a frowning face. And those wingingbillets-doux, already weighted with caution and now heavy with doubt, in the mind's eye faltered, hung, and came fluttering, drifting, so many falling white doves, wings broken, down from the blue.
PINK TICKETS FOR TEXTS
Thewalls of St. Simeon's conservatism had fallen. St. Simeon's, with its arches above, its pews below, their latched doors, as it were, symbolic, the Old Dispensation depicted in the window above its entrance doors, and St. Paul, the apostle of the personal revelation, smitten to his knees by light from Heaven, the figure of the window above its chancel. Modern progressiveness, the battering-ram in the hands of Willie Glidden, come up through the Sunday school himself but yesterday, had assailed the defenses of an older generation successfully.
Or so Uncle Charlie seemed to think as he repeated the news brought from Sundayschool by Aunt Louise and Emmy Lou. "Dr. Angell came into the Sunday school room this morning and offered a rector's prize for pink tickets earned for texts? Each child receiving a pink ticket for every Sunday throughout the year to be thus rewarded? Willie Glidden has goaded him to this."
Mr. Glidden had goaded the rector of St. Simeon's to other things which Emmy Lou, nearing nine years, had heard discussed at home.
"Popular heads to my sermons for the newspapers and the bulletin board?" it was reported that Dr. Angell had said indignantly. "Who but Glidden wants notices in the papers or a bulletin board either? For forty years I have sedulously refrained from being popular, and I'll not begin it now."
But he came to it, popular heads being furnished by him weekly, in a dazed pother at finding himself doing it, but still doing it.
"Prizes to encourage the Sunday school?" so report said his comment was to this last proposition. "Pay the children of my church for doing their duty?"
But the report also said that he calmed down on grasping that the proposition centered about texts.
When Dr. Angell met the little people of his flock in the company of their elders he addressed them much after the same fashion. "A big girl, now!" or "Quite a little man!" he would say. "Old enough to be coming to church every Sunday and profiting by service and sermon."
"Sermon," said he, on occasion to a little boy who said he didn't like sermons. "The sooner you realize and profit by the knowledge that life is one unending sermon, sirrah, the better for you."
Dr. Angell had gathered his own sermons into a book, as Aunt Cordelia told proudly tostrangers, a stout volume bound in cloth, with a golden sun in a nimbus of rays stamped on the cover, entitled "Rays from the Sun of Righteousness."
And now, his attention caught and held by the word "text," since from his viewpoint to every sermon its text, and possibly to every text its sermon, he was offering a rector's prize for a year's quiver of pink tickets, these being the visible show of as many correctly recited texts.
"Will you have Emmy Lou try?" Aunt Louise said to Aunt Cordelia. "We in the Sunday school feel we should do all we can to support Mr. Glidden."
But Aunt Cordelia needed no urging from Aunt Louise. She did not feel that respect for the institutions introduced at St. Simeon's by Mr. Glidden that Aunt Louise felt, and did not hesitate to say so. But anything inaugurated by the rector of her church she did respect.
"If Dr. Angell is offering the prize, certainly Emmy Lou will try. A rector's, not a Willie Glidden prize, is a different thing. It will be something for her to esteem and value all her life. I am sorry it is for texts." Evidently the word had the same associations for Aunt Cordelia that it had for Dr. Angell. "I have trouble enough as it is in making her want to stay to church."
Aunt Louise explained. "The prizes are for the weekly texts heading the Sunday school lessons. They have no connection with church or the sermon."
"Well, maybe not," Aunt Cordelia conceded, "but if she is going to take a prize from Dr. Angell for texts, and I shall see to it that she does, it is no more than she ought to be willing to do, to listen cheerfully to his sermons. I have been too lenient in excusing her from church."
On this same Sunday afternoon Emmy Louwent around to talk the matter over with Hattie, and found Sadie there.
Emmy Lou and Hattie had been estranged, their first misunderstanding, Emmy Lou, with St. Simeon's back of her, having taken one stand, and Hattie another.
Emmy Lou spoke of kneeling at her church to pray and standing to sing and Hattie corrected her. "Who ever beard of such a thing? You mean stand to pray and sit down to sing."
Emmy Lou didn't mean anything of the kind and said so.
Hattie faced her down. "Don't I go to church? Doesn't Sadie go?" turning to this person as referee. "Don't we know?"
Sadie was obliged to qualify her support. "We don'tstandto pray, we lean our foreheads on the next pew."
Emmy Lou refused to be coerced. "I don't stand to pray, or lean forward either. I kneel down."
"Then," said Hattie, "it must be because you are what my father calls a bigoted Episcopalian, that you don't. Everybody else stands up or leans forward."
Emmy Lou had faced the chancel of her church for four years. "St. Paul doesn't. He's kneeling above our chancel."
"Then he must be a bigoted Episcopalian too," said Hattie with feeling, and went home.
But today Hattie and Sadie, if anything, were envious of Emmy Lou's opportunity. A rector's prize!
Hattie, to be sure, with the books of the Bible in her memory as were David's pebbles in his scrip, once had felled the giant, Contest, and won the banner for the girls over the boys at her Sunday school. For which act of prowess her teacher had rewarded her with a little gold pin.
And Sadie had a workbox, a little affair complete, scissors, thimble, and all, a recognitionof faithfulness at large, from her Sunday school teacher, the same delivered to her by the superintendent before the assembled Sunday school. And as she pointed out, the calling of her name and the walk up and down the aisle to receive the gift were no small part of the reward.
It did stagger them both that Emmy Lou should have to stay to church. "Still," argued Hattie, "it will be worth it, a rector's prize. Though why you don't say preacher!"
"Or minister," said Sadie.
"My brother once got a silver dollar for a prize that wasn't a dollar at all but a watch made to look like a dollar," said Hattie.
"But not from church," Sadie reminded her.
"No, from the President Dollar Watch Company for guessing the pictures of the presidents. But still it was a prize."
Sadie could supplement this. "My mammaheard of a little girl who sold tickets for a picnic and won a locket on a chain."
Emmy Lou went home cheered. Aunt Cordelia had put the emphasis on the texts whereas Hattie and Sadie had put it on the prize.
"A silver dollar that wasn't a dollar but a watch, and a locket on a chain," said Uncle Charlie, overhearing her tell about it. "Well, well!"
A rector's prize should indeed be something worth the working for. Fifty-two pink tickets standing for fifty-two correctly recited texts, and attendance at church for fifty-two Sundays!
For Aunt Cordelia was as good as her word. The next Sunday she and Uncle Charlie on their road to St. Simeon's met Emmy Lou returning from Sunday school. Hitherto on these weekly encounters it was a toss-up whether she should be allowed to proceed, or must return to church.
With Emmy Lou, face and eyes uplifted to Aunt Cordelia, mutely interceding for herself, while Uncle Charlie articulately interceded for her, it was a stand-off whether or not she should be required to go. And when the worst happened and she must turn about and accompany Aunt Cordelia, the propinquity of Uncle Charlie in the pew beside her had helped her through. Until recently he had slipped smoothly rounded peppermints banded in red from his vest pocket to her, or, the supply running low, passed her his pencil and an envelope to amuse herself. But she was a big girl now and Aunt Cordelia no longer permitted these indulgences.
"Sermons in pencils too, perhaps, Cordelia," Uncle Charlie pleaded, "and good in peppermints."
But in vain. "Charlie!" Aunt Cordelia but remonstrated, shocked.
Nor was Emmy Lou to be excused today.Aunt Cordelia, plump and comely in her furs and ample cloak and seemly bonnet, and Uncle Charlie in his top-coat, gray trousers, silk hat, and natty cane, brought up short on meeting her. Not that she, in a chinchilla coat suitable for the big girl she was, and a gray plush hat, with her hair tied with scarlet ribbons, had much hope herself.
"I see you have your pink ticket in your hand, a good beginning," said Aunt Cordelia. "I'm glad you walked to meet us. You can do so every Sunday; the change and relaxation will do you good. Now, Charlie, not a word. From now on, while she is trying for Dr. Angell's prize, she will go back with us to church."
Emmy Lou found herself there within a very few minutes, the parallelograms of pews about her filled with the assembled congregation, she in her place between Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie.
And at home, where she now would be had Aunt Cordelia relented, what? Her children doomed to sit in a wooden row against the baseboard until she arrived to release them. The new book, for Emmy Lou is reading now, left where one begins to divine that the white cat in reality is a beautiful lady. Also at home on Aunt Cordelia's table that Sunday institution never forgotten by Uncle Charlie, the box of candy, from whose serried layers Emmy Lou may take one piece in Aunt Cordelia's absence. Furthermore at home the realm of the kitchen with its rites of Sunday preparation, Aunt M'randy its priestess, and delectable odors and savory steam arising from its altar, the cooking-stove.
And in the stead for Emmy Lou a morning spent in church. Still she can settle down and think of the prize which as reward for all this faithfulness will be hers. Think of Hattie's gold pin, and Sadie's work-basket, of the silverdollar which in reality was a watch, and the locket on the chain.
Aunt Cordelia touches Emmy Lou, and, brought to herself, she stands up. Aunt Cordelia finds the place and hands her a prayer book. Church has begun.
Amid form without meaning, and symbol without clue, the mind of Emmy Lou wanders again, this time to that puzzle, the adult, no less impenetrable to the mind of nine than the shrouded mystery of ancient Egypt to the adult. For adults, Aunt Cordelia for one, here beside her in the pew, love to go to church. The proof? That they of their own volition, since the adult acts of himself, are here.
Aunt Cordelia touches Emmy Lou. She and Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie and the congregation of St. Simeon's, Hattie to the contrary, kneel down.
But the mind continues to wander. The adult is here because it wants to be here,whereas Emmy Lou is here because Aunt Cordelia says she must be. Her eyes, too, will travel ahead on the prayer book page to the amen. What amen? Any and all, since amens wherever occurring signify the end of the especial thing of the moment, whether said, sung or prayed. The thought sustaining one being that, amen succeeding amen, the final and valedictory one is bound to come in time.
"Get up for the Venite," whispers Aunt Cordelia, and Emmy Lou who has lost herself on her knees gets up, pink with the defection. Not that the Venite has any significance to her which brings her to her feet, but that to find herself in the wrong situation at church, or anywhere, is embarrassing.
This pitfall of ritual is called the service, though it might be worse since the more service the less sermon. As nearly as Emmy Lou can grasp it, at Hattie's church, beyond a sparsestanding up to pray, and sitting down to sing, it is all sermon.
Aunt Cordelia has to speak to her by and by again: "Get up for the Jubilate," Emmy Lou having lost herself during the second lesson.
And yet? And yet? Can it be there is more in this business of church than an Emmy Lou suspects? The congregation now going down on its knees for that matter called the Litany, a tear presently splashes on the glove of Aunt Cordelia kneeling beside Emmy Lou, her head bowed above the big, cross-emblazoned prayer book that she always uses.
Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise wear white gloves or gray or brown as the case may be, and feathers and flowers, and their dresses are varied and cheery. But Aunt Cordelia still wears black in memory of Emmy Lou's mother who went away when Emmy Lou was four. The tear falling on her black glove and slidingoff to the book makes a stain tinged with purple from the kid.
Then Emmy Lou remembers this is the anniversary of the day her mother went forever, and understands why the prayer book in Aunt Cordelia's hand is open at the flyleaf bearing the name of its first owner, Emily Pope McLaurin.
Are we nearer our dead at church? And being nearer, are we comforted? For when Aunt Cordelia arises from her knees her face is happy.
"The four hundred and ninety-fourth hymn," she whispers. "Find the place." Then in refutation of Hattie, "Stand up."
And Emmy Lou, finding the hymn for herself, stands up and with Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie and the congregation, sings heartily:
"The Church's one foundationIs Jesus Christ her Lord——"
While the service thus drags its length along, the hymn which Emmy Lou both can find for herself and can sing heartily being the only oasis in the desert of her morning, there is worse ahead. Between two uprising peaks of the amens, one of which is reached with the close of the hymn, lies that valley of dry bones called the sermon.
Dr. Angell is beginning it now. "'Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.'"
This seems a reasonably clear and definite statement even to Emmy Lou, not quite nine and slow to follow. But no.
"The Psalmist was given to imagery, which is to say, was an Oriental," begins Dr. Angell. And so one goes down with him into the valley of dry bones.
The mind wanders anew. How can it help wandering? Albert Eddie Dawkins is across the church in a side pew with his big sister,Sarah. She has decided that he shall try for a rector's prize too. He is low in his mind about it, and said so to Emmy Lou coming out of Sunday school this morning.
Joe Kiffin made a proposition to him that he could not accept, Joe being the big boy who drove the wagon and delivered for the Dawkins grocery.
"He said he would take me and another boy this morning to a place where we can get all the honey locusts we want. A place where the ground is covered with 'em. But we both had to come to Sunday school and stay to church, and Joe says we can't expect him to take us in the afternoon when it's the only afternoon he's got. You know honey locusts?"
Emmy Lou was compelled to admit that she did not.
"Well," a little anxiously, "I don't either. But if I and the other boy could have gone with Joe, I'd have found out."
"With one pink ticket in hand, fifty-one yet to be achieved for texts.""With one pink ticket in hand, fifty-one yet to be achieved for texts."
The other boy was at church too. By turning her head the least bit Emmy Lou could see him. His name was Logan. But he wasn't trying for a prize. He said they might make him stay to church—"they" meaning the grown persons in the pew with him—but they couldn't make him try for pink tickets, or walk up an aisle to get a prize he mightn't want anyway.
Mightn't Logan want it? Was there any chance that Emmy Lou would not want hers? Fifty-two—no, fifty-one—Sundays now to come, and with one pink ticket in hand, fifty-one yet to be achieved for texts.
Dr. Angell is ending his sermon. ". . . and so it comes that the words of the Psalmist occurring in the liturgy of our service, are a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path." And he and his congregation come up out of the valley of dry bones.
And yet? And yet? Emmy Lou's eyes, fixed on Dr. Angell, are registering on theretina of her mind for all time a figure which for her shall be a type, dominant in its attitude of beneficent authority, hands outspread above its people, rumpled hair white, beard white, robes white, a shaft of light from a common window into heaven shared with him by St. Paul, the bigoted Episcopalian, searching him out where he stands.
As void of meaning to her, these gettings up and these sittings down, these venites, jubilates, and amens, as the purpose of Dr. Angell in his chancel. Yet who shall say at what moment Emmy Lou in her pew, struggling along in the darkness though she is, shall sense the symbol of the one, and behold in the other the office and the appointment?
And the adult who is here of self-actuated volition? The Aunt Cordelia ever in her place in the family pew? Emmy Lou's eyes turn to this person, and behold, her face is touched as by a light, too, and her eyes are shining.
"Get up," she whispers as she herself arises, "it is the benediction."
Uncle Charlie is jocular on the way home. "And what did you think of the sermon?" he asks Emmy Lou.
She does not know that he is jocular, nor that she too, unwittingly, is the same in her reply. "I thought I understood the text until Dr. Angell began to explain it, and then I lost it."
Fifty-one more Sundays, fifty-one more sermons, fifty-one more texts between Emmy Lou and her reward! The next Sunday and there would be fifty, and the next forty-nine!
As the weeks went by Emmy Lou discussed the prize with Aunt Cordelia, and incidentally with Uncle Charlie who overheard the conversations.
"When Albert Eddie's mamma won a prize for catechism in England where she lived when she was little, it was tea to take home to hermother, and a flannel petticoat for her grandma, and she cried."
And again. "Sadie says it's an awful thing when your name is called, to get up and walk up the aisle, but Hattie says that you don't mind it so much if you keep thinking about the prize."
Papa came down once a month from his home city a hundred miles away, to stay over Sunday and see Emmy Lou. "I was going to propose," he said on one of these visits, "that the next time, you and Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie get on the train and come up to visit me. But it's no use, I see."
"Not until I get my prize," said Emmy Lou. "I have forty-one pink tickets in Aunt Cordelia's bureau drawer, and today will make forty-two."
"I am almost sorry I let her try," Aunt Cordelia told her brother-in-law and UncleCharlie. "She begins to study the text for the next Sunday as soon as she gets home on this."
Aunt Louise, as the allotted Sunday drew near, brought home news of a tiff between Dr. Angell and Mr. Glidden.
"Mr. Glidden told Dr. Angell today that he had been looking over a printed list of Sunday school prizes sent to superintendents, and had noticed some excellent suggestions. Dr. Angell was ruffled and said, 'If I'm fool enough to come to prizes, bribes for duty, I'm nevertheless still capable of providing them.' I'm afraid he is getting old."
"Old," retorted Uncle Charlie. "It's being goaded by Willie Glidden. Drive even a saint too far and he will show his manhood."
"Hattie's is a little pin," remarked Emmy Lou, even irrelevantly, "and Sadie's is a workbox, and that other little girl's was a locket on a chain."
The morning of the fifty-third Sunday came. "I don't know which she is the more, proud, or alarmed, at thought of walking up the aisle this morning for her prize," said Aunt Cordelia after Emmy Lou left the breakfast table. "There are only three children who have come through successfully in the whole Sunday school, Charlie. A little girl named Puggy Western, according to Emmy Lou, she herself, and Albert Eddie Dawkins. Two of the three are thanks to Sarah and myself, if I do say it."
The moment was come. The Sunday school—Bible Class, Big Room, and Infant Class—was assembled. Mr. Glidden, with Dr. Angell beside him, had arisen.
"One at a time, Puggy Western, Emily Louise McLaurin, and Albert Edward Dawkins come forward and receive their prizes."
Puggy Western went up first, in a brand-new hat and coat for the occasion, and came back.
Emily Louise McLaurin went up next in a next-to-new coat and hat and dress, and came back.
Albert Edward Dawkins, in a new suit and his first high collar, went up and came back. A hymn, and Sunday school was over, and all ages and sizes crowded around the three to see their similar rewards.
When Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie on their road to church met Emmy Lou this morning, her eyes, like her late accumulation of tickets, were pink. She to whom tears came hard and seldom had been crying.
"And how about the prize?" asked Uncle Charlie.
Emmy Lou, tears stoutly held back, handed it to him. He looked it over, opened it, readher name in inscription within, then lifted his gaze to her.
"Well, I'll be doggoned!"
"Charlie!" from Aunt Cordelia.
"I surely will. The same to the other two?"
Emmy Lou nodded. There are times when one cannot trust oneself to speak.
And when Uncle Charlie handed back the volume stoutly bound in cloth, stamped with a golden sun in a nimbus of rays, and bearing for title, "Rays From the Sun of Righteousness," the nimbus surrounded, not a golden sun, but a silver dollar held in place by Uncle Charlie's thumb.
"A dollar that is only a dollar, and not a watch," he explained regretfully. "But somewhere in the week ahead we may be able to overtake a locket on a chain." Then to Aunt Cordelia, "I'll decide it this morning, Cordelia. Emmy Lou is excused for today from anything further in the nature of sermons."
The next Sunday Albert Eddie Dawkins was absent from Sunday school. He had run off, so his sister Maud explained, and could not be found.
Emmy Lou heard more about it later on from Albert Eddie himself. She also found out what a honey locust is, though she had had to wait a year to do so.
"I told Joe Kiffen if he'd take us to that honey locust place now, that he said he would last year, I'd stay away from Sunday school. And he did. And here's one for you."
Emmy Lou took the pod and bit into it. As solace and recompense she could have wished for something more delectable.
STERN DAUGHTER OF THE VOICE OF GOD
Hattie'srule of life was simple, but severe. She set it forth for Emmy Lou. "Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and you have to draw the line between. And when you've chosen which side you're on, you have to stand by your colors."
She went on to diagram her meaning. "I heard my father tell my brothers what it means to stand by your colors. He said they couldn't be too careful in their associates. That now they've joined the League for the Right they must show their faith by their works. You and I can't associate with anyone who chooses the other side either. If Lisa Schmit will go to Sunday picnics, she's wrong, and you andI have to show our colors and tell her so."
Emmy Lou hesitated at such consignment of Lisa to the limbo defined as wrong, but Hattie said she didn't dare hesitate. She even showed a disposition to take Emmy Lou's right of election into her keeping, saying if she felt this way about it she'd speak for her.
"No, we won't come into your game of prisoner's base," she told Lisa and Yetta at recess; "we're going to have a game of our own."
The contumely for the unfriendly act nevertheless fell on Emmy Lou who knew them best. "She's getting to be stuck up," Lisa said bitterly to her own group, with a jerk of her head toward Emmy Lou standing by Hattie. "She won't play with Yetta and me any more because our papa keeps a grocery."
"No such thing!" said Hattie. "She won't play with you because you go to picnics on Sunday."
Was this true? Or was it because Hattie had told her she must not play with them because they went to picnics on Sunday?
Hattie called this bringing of Lisa and Yetta to judgment "drawing the line." It was a painful process to the rejected. Lisa went off with her face suffused and Yetta who followed her was crying.
Next followed the case of Mittie Heinz whose mamma kept a little shop for general notions, a stock that Emmy Lou never had been able to identify, often as she had been there to buy needles or thread or cambric for Aunt Cordelia.
Mittie read her storybook on the steps of the shop on Sunday and Hattie explained to her that this made it impossible to include her in a game of catcher.
"Right's right, and wrong's wrong," she said. "If we are going to draw the line we have to draw it."
"I read my books on Sunday," expostulated Emmy Lou, for Mittie's startled face showed surprise as she turned away, and her eyes looked reproach at Emmy Lou.
"But they are books you get out of your Sunday school library, and don't count anyway because you say you don't like them," from Hattie.
This lamentable and unhappy knowledge of good and evil was forced on Emmy Lou when in the ascending scale of years she simultaneously reached her ninth birthday, the Fourth Reader, and the estate of bridesmaid to Aunt Katie.
Life from this eminence appeared broad-spread and beautiful, and diversified by variant paths within the sweep of a far horizon until now never suspected. But Hattie, youthful Virgil to her youthful Dante, permitted personally conducted excursions only, and these along a somewhat monotonous because straitand narrow path—all other roads, whether devious or parallel, flower-bedecked or somber, ascending or descending, leading but to questionable ends.
The first travelers pointed out by Hattie as trudging these alien roads were Lisa, Yetta, and Mittie, as has been shown. The second group journeying on an upland, flowery way paralleling the strait and narrow path in general direction, at least, were Alice, Rosalie, and Amanthus. Charming names! Enchanting figures!
School opened early in September. Alice, Rosalie, and Amanthus, who were newcomers, were given desks across the aisle from Emmy Lou. Alice, seeing her earnestly scrubbing her desk each morning before school and arranging it for the day, laughed in her eyes. Amanthus, seeing her test her pen and try her ink for the coming ordeal of copybook, laughed in her dimple. And Rosalie, asking her whatshe was hunting on the outspread page of her geography, laughed aloud when Emmy Lou replied that it was Timbuctoo, and that she could find it easier if she knew whether it was a country, or a mountain, or a river. On which they all came across the aisle and hugged her.
"You said in class that the plural of footnote was feetnotes," said Rosalie.
"You said, when the teacher held you down about the spelling in your composition, that a dog didn't have fore-feet but four feet," said Amanthus.
"It's so funny and so dear," said Alice.
"What?" asked Emmy Lou.
"You," said Amanthus, and they all kissed her.
"Come and see us," said Rosalie; "we're your neighbors now. We've moved in the white house with the big yard on your square, and Alice, our cousin, and her mother have come to live with us. We've never been to a publicschool before. You live in a white house at the other end of the square. We saw you in the yard."
"I'll come this afternoon," said Emmy Lou, "and I'll bring Hattie. I'll get her now so she'll know you."
But Hattie declined to come. She shook her head decidedly. "They've light dispositions and I've not. My mamma said so about some other little girls I couldn't get along with. I don't want to come, and besides I'm not sure I want to know them."
Which would imply that light dispositions were undesirable apart from Hattie's inability to get along with them! Hattie could be most disturbing.
Towards noon a sudden shower fell, and the class was told to remain in its room for recess and eat its luncheons at its desks.
Across the aisle on the other side of Emmy Lou sat Charlotte Wright. She, too, hadshown every disposition to be friendly but Hattie discouraged this also. She leaned from her desk now. "Will you have a piece of my homemade hickory-nut candy?" She spoke with pride. "My mamma let me make it myself on the grate."
On the grate? Why not in the kitchen on the stove? Still that was Charlotte's own affair. More showy than tidy in her dress, she seemed one of those detached and anxious little girls hunting for friends. The kindly impulse was to respond to overtures, Emmy Lou knowing a past where she had needed friends. And besides there was the candy. Hickory-nut candy does not have to look tidy to look good. She had a liberal lunch outspread on the napkin upon her desk, but she had no candy.
But Hattie leaving her desk and approaching, held her back. "No, she won't have any candy," she said, and gathering up EmmyLou's lunch in the napkin and thus forcing her to follow, walked away.
Whereupon Rosalie and Amanthus, arising and going around to Charlotte, flung back their curls as they crowded into her desk, one on either side of her, andaskedfor a piece of her candy.
"I don't say it wasn't hard to do," said Hattie, flushed and even apologetic. "But I had to. She's not your kind, and she's not mine."
Yet Rosalie and Amanthus were sharing Charlotte's desk and her candy. Was she their kind?
Hattie's voice had dropped and was even awe-struck as she explained. "Charlotte's papa and her mamma don't live together. I heard my mother and my aunt say so. She and her mother live in a boarding house next to the confectionery."
In a boarding house? Charlotte through necessity making her candy on a grate, therefore,and not in the kitchen! And proof indeed that she was not their kind, even to Emmy Lou, in a day when the home, however small, was the measure of standing and the rule!
Yet Alice has arisen and is looking across at Charlotte. Emmy Lou loves Alice. Light disposition or not, she is drawn to her. Her hair is a pale gold while the curls of her cousins are sunny, and her smile is in her reflective eyes while theirs is in lip and dimple. Of the three she loves Alice. Why? She has no idea why. Alice moves forward suddenly and going around to Charlotte leans to her and kisses her.
"Is Charlotte their kind?" Emmy Lou asks Hattie who also was watching.
"Ask them; they ought to know," tersely. "We can't afford to care, even if it does make us sorry. My father said people have to stand by their colors."
Later as school was dismissed and the classwas filing out, Rosalie called to Emmy Lou, "If you will go by for Charlotte, she says she will come this afternoon, too."
Emmy Lou went home disturbed. Charlotte's father and mother did not live together, and because of this Charlotte was not their kind.
Marriage then is not a fixed and static fact? As day and night, winter and summer? Would she yet learn that the other family relations as brother and sister, parent and child, are subject to repudiation and readjustment, too?
Emmy Lou was just through serving as bridesmaid for Aunt Katie, in a filmy dress with a pink sash around what Uncle Charlie said was by common consent and courtesy her waist, whatever his meaning by this, and carrying a basket from which she earnestly scattered flowers up the aisle of St. Simeon's in the path of the bride, and incidentally in thepath of Mr. Reade, the bridegroom, and had supposed she now knew something about marriage.
The sanction of St. Simeon's was upon the bride, crowned with the veil and orange blossoms of her solemn dedication, or so the bridesmaid had understood it.