Read Ebook: Emmy Lou's Road to Grace: Being a Little Pilgrim's Progress by Martin George Madden Harker G A Illustrator

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Ebook has 188 lines and 9591 words, and 4 pages

Hattie's face was shining! And the faces of her mother, of her father, and of the congregation around, radiated approval and satisfaction!

And in time the soprano of Hattie's church arose in the loft above the minister, supported by the choir. It was the collection.

It was more. It was "Selection No. 1--Sextette from Lucia"! Though the words did not say so!

Hattie, then, had not been blaming Lorelei but defending her? It was Sadie who disapproved of voluntaries and Lorelei?

Emmy Lou with heightened color, resolute face, and blue bows, arrived at home. She went straight to Papa just returned from Uncle Charlie's office and strumming on the piano.

"You're a Presbyterian," she said.

"It sounds like an indictment," said Uncle Charlie. "But he will have to own up. Admit your guilt, Alec. How did you find it out?"

"Presbyterians play and sing 'Selections From the Operas' on Sunday, and so does he."

"You look ruffled, Alec," from Uncle Charlie, "But so does someone else. Your cheeks are hot," to Emmy Lou. "Something else is disturbing; out with it."

"The girl named Lorelei Ritter who laughed at me Friday in class was at church and spoke to me coming out."

"What did she say?"

"She said did I know it was her father who played the concomitant to the soprano's song?"

"Invite her round, and urge her to be friendly," begged Uncle Charlie when he stopped shouting. "We need her badly. Besides I'm sure I'd like to know her."

Aunt Cordelia came downstairs that night after seeing Emmy Lou to bed. "Whatever is to be done with the child? Has she talked to you, Alec? She says she can't be confirmed because she is going to be a Presbyterian. And then she cried bitterly. They stand up to pray and sit down to sing, she told me desperately. That if it was right--which it wasn't, of course,--she'd wish people didn't have to be Episcopalians or Bohemians or Presbyterians, but just Christians. I told her I thought we would drop the question of confirmation until next year."

SO TRUTH BE IN THE FIELD

A YEAR later Sarah, the sister of Albert Eddie Dawkins, saw him through the six weeks of the confirmation class, up the aisle of St. Simeon's and confirmed. The next day she started to England to visit her mother's people who had prospered.

"In a way I can feel he is safe now," she said to Aunt Louise at Sunday school on the day of his confirmation. "I wasn't easy about him before, if he is my brother. If he'll only go ahead now, he'll do."

Aunt Cordelia saw Emmy Lou through the same class of preparation, up the aisle and confirmed, and then came home and had a hearty cry. She who always claimed she was too busy seeing to meals, the house, and those within it, to give way!

This seemed to put the odium on Emmy Lou in the event of failure. She would be thirteen years old in another month, her cheek-line was changing from round to oval, she was preparing for the high school, and her waist, according to Miss Anna Williams, the seamstress who made her confirmation dress, is coming round to be a waist.

She looked in distress at Aunt Cordelia who was drying her eyes in vain since the tears were continuing, and who seemed far from reassured that she will be what her mother would have her. There was nothing for it in the face of the implication but for Emmy Lou to throw herself into Aunt Cordelia's lap and cry too. After which the atmosphere cleared, the normal was resumed, and everybody felt better.

Sarah, who spoke with more flattering certainty about the future of Albert Eddie, wore her hair coiled on her head now, and her skirts were long. Capable, dependable, and to the point as ever, she was a young lady.

When Aunt Cordelia, accompanied by Emmy Lou, went to do her marketing the Saturday before Sarah left for England, her mother called her down to say good-bye.

"It's a long journey for you at eighteen, Sarah," said Aunt Cordelia, "and we will be glad when we hear you have reached its end safely."

"I can trust Sarah; I always could," said her mother. "If anything goes wrong she'll just have to remember what her grandmother, my mother, used to say to her when she was a wee 'un, and prone to fret when matters snarled and she found she couldn't right 'em, 'When you get to wit's end you'll always find God lives there.'"

Aunt Cordelia shook hands with Sarah, but Emily Louise, as many persons now called her, went up on her toes and kissed her.

"You must ask the prayers of the church for the preservation of all who travel by land and by water," Aunt Cordelia said to Mrs. Dawkins, "and we ourselves must remember her in our prayers. We will miss you, Sarah, in the singing of the hymns on special days and Wednesday evenings when we haven't a choir. I'm glad you went to the organist and had those lessons. A fresh young voice, sweet and strong and sure, like yours, can give great comfort and pleasure."

Hattie was a member of her church now, and Sadie of hers. Rosalie, Alice, and Amanthus were making ready for confirmation at St. Philip's which was high church. All had gone their ways, each to the portal of her own persuasion, as it were, and knocked and said, "I am informed that by this gate is the way thither."

And in answer the gate which is the way thither, according to the understanding of each, had opened and taken the suppliant in and closed behind her.

Which, then, is the gate? And which the way? Each and all so sure?

Time was, before the eyes of Emmy Lou were opened, when she supposed there was but one way. She even had pictured it, sweet and winding and always upward.

This was at a time when Sarah gathering Maud and Albert Eddie and Emmy Lou around her in the sitting-room above the grocery, about the hob, which is to say the grate, sang them hymns. It was from one of these hymns that Emmy Lou had pictured the way.

According to Sarah's hymns there were two classes of travelers on this sweet and goodly way.

Children of the Heavenly King, As ye journey sweetly sing!

These Emmy Lou conceived of first. Later she saw others of whom Sarah sang, less buoyant, less tripping, but with upturned faces no less expectant.

And laden souls by thousands meekly stealing Kind Shepherd turn their weary steps to Thee.

Emmy Lou listening to Sarah's hymns even saw these welcomed.

Angels of Jesus, Angels of light, Singing to welcome The pilgrims of the night.

But that was time ago. There is no one and common road whose dust as it nears Heaven is gold and its pavement stars. Each knocks at the portal of his own persuasion and says, "I am informed that by this gate is the way thither."

But Albert Eddie, having entered his portal, was in doubt. "What is it she wants me to do now I'm in?" he said to Emmy Lou, by "she" meaning Sarah, and by "in," the church of his adoption. His question began in a husky mutter of desperation and ended in a high treble of exasperation. Or was it merely that his voice was uncertain?

For to each age its phenomena, as inevitable as inexplicable. Albert Eddie's voice these days was undependable. Emmy Lou felt an uncharacteristic proneness to tears. Rosalie said it would be wisdom teeth next for everybody all round.

But if Albert Eddie seemed baffled and hazy as to what his duties were following confirmation, Aunt Louise left no doubt with Emmy Lou. The confirmation had been in May, and now a week later lawns were green and lilacs and snowballs in bloom.

"Now that you are a member of the church you can't begin too soon to take your place and do your part," Aunt Louise told her. "The lawn f?te is Thursday night on the Goodwins' lawn. I am going to give you ten tickets to sell, and send ten by you to Albert Eddie since Sarah is not here to give them to him."

Emmy Lou took the tickets prepared to do the best she could. She had had experience with them before. It is only your friends who take them of you, as a necessity and a matter of course, a recognized and expected tax on friendship, as it were.

Associates who are not intimates decline. One named Lettie Grierson, in declining Emmy Lou's tickets now, voiced it all.

"Why should I buy tickets from you? You never bought any from me."

Hattie took one and said she'd go home and get the money and bring it round.

When she arrived that afternoon she brought a message from home with the money. "Mamma says to tell you our church is going to have a lecture on the Holy Land on the twenty-fifth."

Sadie was present, having come to pay for her ticket. "Our Sunday school is going to have a boat excursion up the river in June. The tickets will be twenty-five cents," she told Emmy Lou.

Rosalie arrived a bit later with the money for her ticket. "Alice and Amanthus can't go. They went to Lettie Grierson's church concert last week and I didn't. I can go if I may come and go with you from your house."

These three tickets thus disposed of, Emmy Lou's own, and the three taken by Uncle Charlie for the rest of the household made a fairly creditable showing.

Albert Eddie had less luck. Maud, his sister, so he explained, had been ahead of him, and wherever he might have gone, she had been.

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