Nor was Emmy Lou to be excused today. Aunt Cordelia, plump and comely in her furs and ample cloak and seemly bonnet, and Uncle Charlie in his top-coat, gray trousers, silk hat, and natty cane, brought up short on meeting her. Not that she, in a chinchilla coat suitable for the big girl she was, and a gray plush hat, with her hair tied with scarlet ribbons, had much hope herself.
"I see you have your pink ticket in your hand, a good beginning," said Aunt Cordelia. "I'm glad you walked to meet us. You can do so every Sunday; the change and relaxation will do you good. Now, Charlie, not a word. From now on, while she is trying for Dr. Angell's prize, she will go back with us to church."
Emmy Lou found herself there within a very few minutes, the parallelograms of pews about her filled with the assembled congregation, she in her place between Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie.
And at home, where she now would be had Aunt Cordelia relented, what? Her children doomed to sit in a wooden row against the baseboard until she arrived to release them. The new book, for Emmy Lou is reading now, left where one begins to divine that the white cat in reality is a beautiful lady. Also at home on Aunt Cordelia's table that Sunday institution never forgotten by Uncle Charlie, the box of candy, from whose serried layers Emmy Lou may take one piece in Aunt Cordelia's absence. Furthermore at home the realm of the kitchen with its rites of Sunday preparation, Aunt M'randy its priestess, and delectable odors and savory steam arising from its altar, the cooking-stove.
And in the stead for Emmy Lou a morning spent in church. Still she can settle down and think of the prize which as reward for all this faithfulness will be hers. Think of Hattie's gold pin, and Sadie's work-basket, of the silver dollar which in reality was a watch, and the locket on the chain.
Aunt Cordelia touches Emmy Lou, and, brought to herself, she stands up. Aunt Cordelia finds the place and hands her a prayer book. Church has begun.
Amid form without meaning, and symbol without clue, the mind of Emmy Lou wanders again, this time to that puzzle, the adult, no less impenetrable to the mind of nine than the shrouded mystery of ancient Egypt to the adult. For adults, Aunt Cordelia for one, here beside her in the pew, love to go to church. The proof? That they of their own volition, since the adult acts of himself, are here.
Aunt Cordelia touches Emmy Lou. She and Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie and the congregation of St. Simeon's, Hattie to the contrary, kneel down.
But the mind continues to wander. The adult is here because it wants to be here, whereas Emmy Lou is here because Aunt Cordelia says she must be. Her eyes, too, will travel ahead on the prayer book page to the amen. What amen? Any and all, since amens wherever occurring signify the end of the especial thing of the moment, whether said, sung or prayed. The thought sustaining one being that, amen succeeding amen, the final and valedictory one is bound to come in time.
"Get up for the Venite," whispers Aunt Cordelia, and Emmy Lou who has lost herself on her knees gets up, pink with the defection. Not that the Venite has any significance to her which brings her to her feet, but that to find herself in the wrong situation at church, or anywhere, is embarrassing.