To be sure the details varied. Hitherto the cook in the kitchen had been Mary, pink-cheeked and pretty. Whereas now the cook in the kitchen not only is round and rolling and colored and named Aunt M'randy, but there is a house-boy in the kitchen, too, whose name is Bob. The stabilizing fact remains, however, that there is a cook, and there is a kitchen.
And now there is a little boy next door. For you to go to Sunday school with the little boy next door, holding tight to his hand, while his Mamma at his door, and your Mamma at your door, watch you down the street. That he lords it over you, edicting each thing you shall or shall not do along the way, is according to immutable ruling also, as Georgie makes clear, on the incontrovertible grounds that you are the littler.
He has been to Sunday school too, before you ever heard of it, as he lets you know, and glories in his easy knowledge of the same. And whereas you, on your very first Sunday, get there to learn that Cain killed Mabel, and are visibly terrified at the fate of Mabel, according to Georgie it is a mild event and nothing to what Sunday school has to offer at its best.
He knows the comportment of the place, too, and at the proper moment drags Emmy Lou to her knees with her face crushed to the wooden bench beside his own. And later he upbraids her that she fails in the fervor with which he and everybody else, including the lady who told Emmy Lou she was glad to see her, pour forth a hum of words. When he finds she does not know these words his scorn is blighting. Though when she asks him to teach them to her, it develops that he, the mighty one, only knows a word here and there to come in loud on himself.
For a moment, the other night, Emmy Lou had fancied Aunt Katie was saying these words used at Sunday school, but how could she be sure, seeing that she did not know them herself?
And now there was a little boy next door here! And Emmy Lou arose, her aunties having gone about their Saturday morning affairs, and seeking her little sacque with its scalloped edge, which she pulled on, and her little round hat which she carried by its elastic, went forth into the warm comfort of the Indian Summer morning to find him.
He was at his gate! The rule again! Georgie was ever to be found even so at his gate. Emmy Lou was shy, but not when she knew what she had to do, and why. Opening her gate and going out, paling by paling she went along past her house and her yard, to the little boy at the gate of his house and his yard. When he saw her coming he even came to meet her.
As her aunties had said, he was a dark-eyed and lovely little boy. When she reached him and put out her hand to his, he took it and led her back to his gate with him. His name, she remembered, was Izzy.
"Sunday school is tomorrow?" she said, looking up at Izzy.
"Sunday school?" said Izzy.