Gathering up his knives and board, he went in to set his table. Turning around by and by he found her behind him in the pantry. He talked to himself some more.
"Reckon is I done forgot how it went? 'Bout thet li'l girl got shet up in the pantry after they tol' her to keep out? She knowed ef she coughed they'd hear an' come an' fin' her thar. An' she hed to cough. An' she wouldn't cough. An' she hed to. An' she wouldn't. An' she hed to. An' she DID. But it wuz too late. The pieces of her wuz ev'ey whar, even to the next spring when they wuz house-cleanin', an' foun' her knuckle-bone on the fur top shelf. Looks lak to me, somebody else is gettin' ready for a good lesson. Better watch out."
The final outrage was yet to come. At the close of dinner Emmy Lou came round to Aunt Cordelia's chair. Aunt Cordelia was worn out. She had never known her Emmy Lou to behave as she had in the last day or so.
"Now don't come asking me again," she said, forestalling the issue. "I've gone over the matter with you several times before today. You cannot go play with anybody. No, not with Maud at the corner or anybody else." Then to Uncle Charlie, shaking his head over this unwonted friction as he rose to start back down town: "They tell me there is whooping-cough around everywhere, Charlie." Then to Emmy Lou: "Now try and be a good girl for the rest of the day, Aunt Cordelia will have her hands full. It is Bob's afternoon out. Try and be Aunt Cordelia's precious baby."
But Emmy Lou, her tongue traveling the row of her teeth anew, didn't propose to be anybody's precious baby. She was a big girl, now, almost six years old, and wanted it recognized that she was. And she didn't feel good in the least, but like being quite the reverse for the rest of the day.
This was at two o'clock. At three Aunt Cordelia's own Emmy Lou, the pink calico upon her person and a straw hat upon her head, turned the knob of the front door. Having obeyed thus far in life, she was about to disobey.
The front door, its knob requiring both hands and her tiptoes, whereas the kitchen door would have been open. But Aunt M'randy was in the kitchen.
As it chanced, Bob was leaving by the kitchen door, and coming around by the side pavement as Emmy Lou came down the steps, they met. His idea seemed to be that she was tagging after him, an injury in itself when she divined it. He was of the same mind evidently when a moment later she was still beside him outside the gate.
He paused and addressed the air disparagingly before he went. "Looks like to me I'll have to bresh up my ricollection 'bout thet li'l girl whut would come outside her own gate after she was tole not to come. Spoilin' for one good lesson, thet li'l girl wuz, an' 'pears like to me she got it. Better watch out." And Bob was gone, up the street, whereas it was the definite intention of the other person at that gate to go down the street.
Mr. Dawkins' grocery fronted on the main street while his housedoor opened on the side-street. A few moments later a small figure in a familiar pink dress and straw hat reached this side door, and, pausing long enough for her tongue to pass uneasily along the row of her teeth, opened it upon a flight of stairs and went in.