It was soon after that Mary Agatha brought a note; she told Rosalie and Emmy Lou about it; it asked that Mary Agatha be allowed a seat to herself. This, Mary Agatha explained, was because, preparatory to Confirmation, she was trying to keep her mind from secular things, and a seat to herself would help her to do it.
“Mary Agatha was as one already apart from things secular.”
To Rosalie and Emmy Lou, Mary Agatha was as one already apart from things secular. To them the look on her clear, pale little profile was already rapt.
But Mary Agatha went on to tell them why she was different from Kitty or Nora, or the others of her Confirmation Class. It was because she was going to be a Bride of Heaven.
Rosalie listened, awed. But Emmy Lou did not quite understand.
Mary Agatha looked pityingly at her. “You know what a bride is? And you know what’s Heaven?”
The bell rang. Emmy Lou returned to the mental eminence of her Fifth Reader heights, still hazy. Yet she hardly needed the Dictionary, for she knew a bride. Aunt Katie had been a bride. With a diamond star. And presents. And Emmy Lou knew Heaven.
Though lately Emmy Lou’s ideas of Heaven had broadened. Hitherto, Heaven, conceived of the primitive, primary mind, had been a matter of vague numbers seated in parallel rows, answering to something akin to Roll Call, and awarded accordingly. But lately, a birthday had brought Emmy Lou a book called “Tanglewood Tales.” And Heaven had since taken on an Olympian colouring and diversity more complex and perplexing.