"Emmy Lou has no idea but of going to her own Sunday school picnic," said Aunt Cordelia. "I wish, Charlie, you would be still about your tickets and the circus."
"They are not my tickets. They are going to stay right here. I merely was to go with Emmy Lou on one of them. They are her tickets to do with as she wants and to take whom she pleases."
Though the circus did go by in the night, according to report next morning, Emmy Lou failed to hear it. Nor did the melancholy of the tolling bell disturb her. Aunt Cordelia said this was because she was going to her Sunday school picnic as she should, and had a quiet conscience.
"I come roun' by the circus as I come to work," Bob said in the pantry where Aunt Cordelia and he packed the basket with Emmy Lou for spectator. "Gittin' them wagons with the lookin'-glass sides ready for the perade. Thet ol' elephant come swinging erlong like he owned the y'earth. Mr. Charlie gimme a ticket las' night to go."
Which reminded Emmy Lou. Even though she was going to the picnic, there was comfort in the thought those tickets yet on the mantelpiece were hers. She went into the dining-room and pushed a chair to the hearth. The sprigged muslin she was to wear had a pocket, and later when this dress was put on the tickets which were her own were in the pocket.
If one never has been to a picnic the only premises to go on are those given you.
"You haven't a thing to do but stay with Maud and Albert Eddie, and mind Sarah," said Aunt Cordelia as she put Emmy Lou's hat on her head and its elastic under her chin, "except, of course, to look after your basket. There is pink icing on the little cakes and a good tablecloth that I don't want anything to happen to under the beaten biscuits at the bottom. There is ham and there's tongue and there's chicken."
"I have to look after the basket," Emmy Lou told Sarah as she and the Dawkins with the rest of St. Simeon's Sunday school were put aboard the excursion cars.
"Of course you do," said Sarah approvingly. "We all do. It's right here. And," with the heartiness of one distributing largesse in privileges, the meanwhile settling her three charges in their places, "when we get off the car Albert Eddie shall carry it."
Emmy Lou had a seat between Albert Eddie and Maud. Beyond Albert Eddie were three little boys in knickerbockers, blouses, and straw hats, as gloomy in face as he.