When Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie on their road to church met Emmy Lou this morning, her eyes, like her late accumulation of tickets, were pink. She to whom tears came hard and seldom had been crying.
"And how about the prize?" asked Uncle Charlie.
Emmy Lou, tears stoutly held back, handed it to him. He looked it over, opened it, read her name in inscription within, then lifted his gaze to her.
"Well, I'll be doggoned!"
"Charlie!" from Aunt Cordelia.
"I surely will. The same to the other two?"
Emmy Lou nodded. There are times when one cannot trust oneself to speak.
And when Uncle Charlie handed back the volume stoutly bound in cloth, stamped with a golden sun in a nimbus of rays, and bearing for title, "Rays From the Sun of Righteousness," the nimbus surrounded, not a golden sun, but a silver dollar held in place by Uncle Charlie's thumb.
"A dollar that is only a dollar, and not a watch," he explained regretfully. "But somewhere in the week ahead we may be able to overtake a locket on a chain." Then to Aunt Cordelia, "I'll decide it this morning, Cordelia. Emmy Lou is excused for today from anything further in the nature of sermons."