Emmy Lou Part 10

"Straight down the Crooked Lane And all round the Square."

Whatever difficulties her plump forefinger had had over the first three of these geometrical propositions, it triumphed at the end, for Emmy Lou paused. A square has four sides, and to suit a four-sided action to the word, takes time.

Miss Carrie, whose attention had wandered a little, here suddenly observing, stopped her, saying her gestures were stiff and meaningless.

She said they looked like straight lines cut in the air.

Emmy Lou, anxious to prove her efforts to be conscientious, explained that they were straight lines, it was a square. Miss Carrie drew herself up, and, using her coldest tones, told Emmy Lou not to be funny.

"Funny!" Emmy Lou felt that she did not understand.

But this was a mere episode between Fridays. One lived but to prepare for Fridays, and a Sunday dress was becoming a mere everyday affair, since one's best must be worn for Fridays.

No other cla.s.s had these recitations and the Third Reader was envied.

Its members were pointed out and gazed upon, until one realised one was standing in the garish light of fame. The other readers, it seemed, longed for fame and craved publicity, and so it came about that the school was to have an exhibition with Miss Carrie's genius to plan and engineer the whole. For general material Miss Carrie drew from the whole school, but the play was for her own cla.s.s alone.

And this was the day of the exhibition.

Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate of the school. They had spent the morning in rehearsing. At noon they had been sent home with instructions to return at half past two. The exhibition would begin at three.

"Of course," Miss Carrie had said, "you will not fail to be on time."

And Miss Carrie had used her deepest tones.

Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou had wondered how she could even dream of such a thing.

It was not two o'clock, and the three stood at the gate, the first to return.

They were in the same piece. It was The Play. In a play one did more than suit the action to the word, one dressed to suit the part.

In the play Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou found themselves the orphaned children of a soldier who had failed to return from the war. It was a very sad piece. Sadie had to weep, and more than once Emmy Lou had found tears in her own eyes, watching her.

Miss Carrie said Sadie showed histrionic talent. Emmy Lou asked Hattie about it, who said it meant tears, and Emmy Lou remembered then how tears came naturally to Sadie.

When Aunt Cordelia heard they must dress to suit the part she came to see Miss Carrie, and so did the mamma of Sadie and the mamma of Hattie.

"Dress them in a kind of mild mourning," Miss Carrie explained, "not too deep, or it will seem too real, and, as three little sisters, suppose we dress them alike."

And now Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate ready for the play. Stiffly immaculate white dresses, with beltings of black sashes, flared jauntily out above spotless white stockings and sober little black slippers, while black-bound Leghorn hats shaded three anxious little countenances. By the exact centre, each held a little handkerchief, black-bordered.

"It seems almost wicked," Aunt Cordelia had ventured at this point; "it seems like tempting Providence."

But Sadie's mamma did not see it so. Sadie's mamma had provided the handkerchiefs. Tears were Sadie's feature in the play.

Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou wore each an anxious seriousness of countenance, but it was a variant seriousness.

Hattie's tense expression breathed a determination which might have been interpreted do or die; to Hattie life was a battling foe to be overcome and trodden beneath a victorious heel; Hattie was an infantile St. George always on the look for The Dragon, and to-day The Exhibition was The Dragon.

Sadie's seriousness was a complacent realization of large responsibility. Her weeping was a feature. Sadie remembered she had histrionic talent.

Emmy Lou's anxiety was because there loomed ahead the awful moment of mounting the platform. It was terrible on mere Fridays to mount the platform and, after vain swallowing to overcome a l.a.b.i.al dryness and a lingual taste of copper, try to suit the action to the word, but to mount the platform for The Play--Emmy Lou was trying not to look that far ahead. But as the hour approached, the solemn importance of the occasion was stealing brainward, and she even began to feel glad she was a part of The Exhibition, for to have been left out would have been worse even than the moment of mounting the platform.

"My grown-up brother's coming," said Hattie, "an' my mamma an' gran'ma an' the rest."

"My Aunt Cordelia has invited the visiting lady next door," said Emmy Lou.

But it was Sadie's hour. "Our minister's coming," said Sadie.

"Oh, Sadie," said Hattie, and while there was despair in her voice one knew that in Hattie's heart there was exultation at the very awfulness of it.

"Oh, Sadie," said Emmy Lou, and there was no exultation in the tones of Emmy Lou's despair. Not that Emmy Lou had much to do--hers was mostly the suiting of the action to some other's word. She was chosen largely because of Hattie and Sadie who had wanted her. And then, too, Emmy Lou's Uncle Charlie was the owner of a newspaper. The Exhibition might get into its columns. Not that Miss Carrie cared for this herself--she was thinking of the good it might do the school.

Emmy Lou's part was to weep when Sadie wept, and to point a chubby forefinger skyward when Hattie mentioned the departure from earth of the soldier parent, and to lower that forefinger footward at Sadie's tearful allusion to an untimely grave.

Emmy Lou had but one utterance, and it was brief. Emmy Lou was to advance one foot, stretch forth a hand and say, in the character of orphan for whom no asylum was offered, "We know not where we go."

That very morning, at gray of dawn, Emmy Lou had crept from her own into Aunt Cordelia's bed, to say it over, for it weighed heavily on her mind, "We know not where we go."

As Emmy Lou said it the momentous import of the confession fell with explosive relief on the _go_, as if the relief were great to have reached that point.

It seemed to Aunt Cordelia, however, that the _where_ was the problem in the matter.

Aunt Louise called in from the next room. Aunt Louise had large ideas.

The stress, she said, should be laid equally on _know not_, _where_, and _go_.

Since then, all day, Emmy Lou had been saying it at intervals of half minutes, for fear she might forget.

Meanwhile, it yet lacking a moment or so to two o'clock, the orphaned heroines continued to linger at the gate, awaiting the hour.

"Listen," said Hattie, "I hear music."

There was a church across the street. The drug-store adjoined it. It was a large church with high steps and a pillared portico, and its doors were open.

"It's a band, and marching," said Hattie.

The orphaned children hurried to the curb. A procession was turning the corner and coming toward them. On either sidewalk crowds of men and boys accompanied it.

"It's a funeral," said Sadie, as if she intuitively divined the mournful.

Hattie turned with a face of conviction. "I know. It's that big general's funeral; they're bringing him here to bury him with the soldiers."

"We'll never see a thing for the crowd," despaired Sadie.

Emmy Lou was gazing. "They've got plumes in their hats," she said.

"Let's go over on the church steps and see it go by," said Hattie, "it's early."

The orphaned children hurried across the street. They climbed the steps. At the top they turned.

There were plumes and more, there were flags and swords, and a band led.