"Stand right where you are," Sarah his big sister was saying to him. "You've had something in your mouth again that you shouldn't. Don't tell me. Can't I smell it now I try?"
Albert Eddie was sniffling, which with a little boy is the first step on the road to crying. But he met his lion.
"It's cigars off the catalpa tree," he wept, and went on into the next room and to bed even as Sarah had forewarned him.
And so, as soon as Emmy Lou is free to speak, she must tell Hattie that she does not know what the Highland Fling is? Alas, that in the exigencies of sharing a desk with this person and incidentally fulfilling the functions of the Second Reader she forgot to do so!
At the school gate at the close of the day Hattie said, "Come go to the corner with me, and I'll show you where I live."
Go with Hattie? Her friend and more, her monitor and protector? Who the day through had steered her by the Charybdis of otherwise certain mistake, and past the Scylla of otherwise inevitable blunder? Go with her at her asking? Did rescued squire follow his protecting knight in fealty of gratitude? Did faithful Sancho fall in at heel at his Quixote's bidding? Emmy Lou, who always went hurrying home because she was bidden so to do, faced around today and went the other way.
Hattie lived in a brick house in a yard. Pausing at her gate she made a proposition. "If you could go to my Sunday school I can come by and get you."
"I go to Sunday school," said Emmy Lou.
Hattie was regretful but acquiescent. "Of course, if you go. I didn't know. I'll walk back with you and see where you live. I'm Presbyterian. What are you?"
Having no idea what Presbyterian was, how could Emmy Lou say in kind what she was?