Aunt Cordelia was going to leave the decision between the circus and the picnic to Emmy Lou, too, because she said she was. Nor did Aunt Cordelia, honest soul, or Emmy Lou, unquestioning and trusting one, dream but that she did.
"I'll see Sarah Dawkins," said Aunt Cordelia to Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise the very next morning, "and arrange with her to look after Emmy Lou at the picnic. We'll use the small hamper for her basket. She can take enough for herself and them. Bob can take her and it around to the church corner where the chartered street cars are to be waiting, and put her in Sarah's charge there. I can't see, Katie, why you oppose a cake with custard filling for the basket."
"It's messy," said Aunt Katie, "both to take and to eat."
"But if she likes it best?" from Aunt Cordelia.
It was the first thing come to Emmy Lou's hearing lending appeal to the picnic; or light on the purpose of the baskets.
Uncle Charlie arriving for dinner outmatched it, however, by another appeal. "I saw a new circus bill on the fence of the vacant lot as I came by. A yellow bill."
Emmy Lou hurried right down there from the dinner-table. Nella, the Child Equestrienne, was kissing her hand right to Emmy Lou from her horse's back. And the elephant, abandoning his customary dark business of putting little children in his trunk, with unexpected geniality was sitting on a stool before a table drinking tea.
And the next day Bob outmatched this. He had been to the grocery to see about chickens for the picnic to which Emmy Lou ought to want to go.
"There's a Flyin' Dutchman on the outside, an' side-shows too. I seen about it on a bill the other side of the grocery. A green bill."
Emmy Lou hurried down there. She didn't see anything that she could identify as a Flying Dutchman, perhaps because she was hazy as to what a Dutchman was. But Zephine, swinging by her teeth, was just leaping into space.