She does not know that he is jocular, nor that she too, unwittingly, is the same in her reply. "I thought I understood the text until Dr. Angell began to explain it, and then I lost it."
Fifty-one more Sundays, fifty-one more sermons, fifty-one more texts between Emmy Lou and her reward! The next Sunday and there would be fifty, and the next forty-nine!
As the weeks went by Emmy Lou discussed the prize with Aunt Cordelia, and incidentally with Uncle Charlie who overheard the conversations.
"When Albert Eddie's mamma won a prize for catechism in England where she lived when she was little, it was tea to take home to her mother, and a flannel petticoat for her grandma, and she cried."
And again. "Sadie says it's an awful thing when your name is called, to get up and walk up the aisle, but Hattie says that you don't mind it so much if you keep thinking about the prize."
Papa came down once a month from his home city a hundred miles away, to stay over Sunday and see Emmy Lou. "I was going to propose," he said on one of these visits, "that the next time, you and Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie get on the train and come up to visit me. But it's no use, I see."
"Not until I get my prize," said Emmy Lou. "I have forty-one pink tickets in Aunt Cordelia's bureau drawer, and today will make forty-two."
"I am almost sorry I let her try," Aunt Cordelia told her brother-in-law and Uncle Charlie. "She begins to study the text for the next Sunday as soon as she gets home on this."
Aunt Louise, as the allotted Sunday drew near, brought home news of a tiff between Dr. Angell and Mr. Glidden.