Now, what started this digression? Oh, yes, Neva's silly songs which she bought while she was up here those few days before school commenced. I started out to say that they did not seem at all silly to me this time. I actually caught myself singing them over and over again and found considerable beauty in one that was a plea to some hardhearted beloved to make "ev'ry dream come true."
Yes, I was delighted with Neva's new songs, and Neva was delighted with everything she saw in the city: with the pure linen shirt-waists marked down to one dollar; with the vast, dim cathedral which we would drop into to enjoy its solemn beauty nearly every time we were near it, after I found that Neva responded to its appeal; she admired the Egyptian mummies in the museum—the terrified delight of my early years; but she found the greatest joy in watching the fire-engines at work.
Mrs. Sullivan remained strictly at home after her first day of tramping the city streets, which she declared "was the death o' her feet," so that Neva's bubbling accounts of the sights seen, when she would return to their hotel at night and try to cheer her mother up with her lively recitals, were by no means the least enjoyable part of the day's program.
"Oh, mamma, the cathedral's just grand," she declared with enthusiasm, after her first visit. "I told Miss Ann that I wished papa had stayed a Catholic and had raised me that way."
Mrs. Sullivan's Baptist eyebrows flew up in horror, then her entire face settled into its normal look of hopelessness.
"Maybe you won't be so glib to wish it at the Great Day of Judgment," she said warningly, and the capital letters I have used were all in her voice.
"—And the mummies!" Neva hastened on, seeing that she had struck the wrong key, and her tones were as light and frolicksome as her mother's were lugubrious. "I just love mummies!"
Mrs. Sullivan still refused to show a smiling interest.
"Well, I reckon they're all right, if Miss Ann recommends 'em," she said grudgingly, but with a little wonder depicted on her face; "still, I make it a rule not to fill my stomach too full of strange vittles!"
"Oh, mamma! They ain't things to eat," Neva corrected, struggling between her shame and amusement, then she launched forth into a brief explanation of embalming "after the manner of the Egyptians."