Emmy Lou's face, bearing marks of recent agitation, showed agitation anew.
"Good work," from Uncle Charlie, just arrived himself. "Who was with her?"
"Some li'l boys, she says. She warn't with nobody when I come on her runnin' f'om thet elephunt toward me without knowin' it, an' screamin'."
Emmy Lou's agitation broke into speech mingled with tears. "He picks little children up and puts them in his trunk. And he tried to pick up me!"
Along in the night Emmy Lou awaking found that she wanted a drink. These warm June nights the water bottle and tumbler sat on the sill of the open window in Aunt Cordelia's room, which meant that Emmy Lou must get out of bed and patter in there to them.
Reaching the window—was Emmy Lou in her nightgown and her bare feet really there and awake or in her bed in reality and direly dreaming?
Was it so or not so, this looming, swinging, menacing bulk, palpably after her again, approaching adown the silent, dusky street?
Seven years old and a little, little girl, Emmy Lou fled to Aunt Cordelia's bedside and tugged at her arm to get her awake.
Aunt Cordelia, taking her into her bed, soothed her, her hand massaging up and down back, shoulders, little thighs, comfortingly enough, even the while she scolds. She takes it without question that Emmy Lou has been dreaming.