And according to her understanding she was, since after her vain endeavor for half an hour by Sarah's clock to hold it in place with tongue and lips, in her palm lay a tooth, the first she had shed or known she had to shed, knowledge coming not by nature but through understanding.
Aunt Cordelia did not carry out her program the day school opened. There was whooping-cough at her house, and a day or so after there was whooping-cough at Mr. Dawkins'.
"He is very indignant about it," Aunt Cordelia told Uncle Charlie. "He stopped me as I came by this morning from my marketing. He said it wasn't even as though we were customers."
"Which is the least we can be after this, I'm sure you will agree," said Uncle Charlie.
Just here in the conversation, Emmy Lou, miserable and stuffy in a pink sacque over her habitual garb because Aunt Cordelia most emphatically insisted, whooped.
"Those good little girls, Marianne and Maria,
Were happy and well as good girls could desire—"
said Aunt Louise.
Aunt Cordelia, approaching with a bottle and spoon as she did after every cough, shook her head. "Little girls who mind are good little girls," she said.
"Emmy Lou is learning to be a good little girl while she is shut up in the house sick," said Aunt Katie. "She knows all of her Commandments In Verse for Sunday school now. Let Aunt Cordelia wipe the cough-syrup off your mouth and say them for Uncle Charlie before he goes."
Emmy Lou learning to be a good little girl said them obediently.