Emmy Lou had asked this question outright a good while ago. Papa was paying her a visit at the time. Unknown to her he had looked over her head at Aunt Cordelia and laid a finger on his lips. Considering the extent and the nature of his obligation to Aunt Cordelia, possibly his idea was there must be no more feeling, though Emmy Lou could not know this.
Having thus communicated with Aunt Cordelia, he answered the question. "Had my two grandfathers elected to be born on one side of the Tweed and not the other, I probably would have been an Episcopalian," he said.
"Tweedledee, in other words, instead of Tweedledum," said Uncle Charlie.
All of which meant that Papa was not an Episcopalian. What was he? Emmy Lou, eight years old then and eleven now, was still asking the question.
At bedtime Aunt Cordelia spoke again about confirmation. "Think it over for the rest of the week and then come tell me what you have decided."
Emmy Lou was glad to be alone in bed. At eleven there is need for constant adjustment and readjustment of the ideas and also for pondering. The relations of one little girl to Heaven and of Heaven to one little girl call for pondering. People assort themselves into Episcopalians, Methodists, and the like. Rebecca Steinau is a Jew, Katie O'Brien is a Dominican, Aunt M'randy in the kitchen is an Afro-American, her insurance paper entitling her to one first-class burial says so. Mr. Dawkins' brother is a Canadian; Maud and Albert Eddie say their father sometimes is sorry he's not a Canadian, too.
Is each of these assortments a religion? Or all the assortments religion? Has God a special feeling about having Emmy Lou an Episcopalian when Papa is something else? Is it not strange that He never, never speaks? In which case she could ask Him and He would tell her.
When Emmy Lou arrived at the grammar school the next morning, for she is thus far on the road of education now, Sadie and Hattie had something to tell her.
There is a pupil in the class this year named Lorelei Ritter. Emmy Lou has heard it claimed by some that she can speak French, by others that she speaks German. The fact is self-evident that she speaks English. She is given to minding her own affairs and in other ways seems sufficient to herself. Miss Amanda, the teacher, is pronouncedly cold to her; they do not seem to get along.
"Where is the Rio de la Plata River, and how does it flow?" Miss Amanda asked her in the class only yesterday.