Surely. With such visible proofs of it upon Izzy. Do little boys wear velvet suits with spotless collar and flamboyant tie but for occasions such as Sunday school? Aunties and even Mammas know less about Sunday school than the Georgies and Izzys, who are authorities since they are the ones who go. Emmy Lou put on her little hat even to the elastic. Then her hand went into Izzy's again.
Izzy's face was alight as he took in her meaning. She was going with _him_. His face was alight as he led her along.
"'Round two corners," said Izzy. "How did you know?"
A golden dome crowned this Sunday school, and wide steps led high to great doors. They waited at their foot, Izzy and Emmy Lou, a dark-eyed little boy in a velvet suit, and a blue-eyed little girl in a gingham dress and scalloped sacque, while others went up and in, old men, young men, old women, young women, little boys, little girls. Waited until Izzy's Mamma arrived and found him.
She was dark-eyed and lovely too. She listened while he explained. Did a shadow, as of patient sadness, cross her face?
"The little girl does not understand, Israel, little son," she said. "Hold her hand carefully, and take her back to her own gate. I will wait for you here."
Emmy Lou, bewildered as she was led along, endeavored to understand.
"It isn't Sunday school?" she asked Izzy.
His face was no longer alight, only gentle and, like his mother's, patient. "Not yours. I thought it was. Mine and my mother's and my father's."
Little girls left at their own gates, little girls who have come to live at their aunties' home, go around by the side way to the kitchen door. Emmy Lou had learned that already. If anyone had missed her there was no evidence of it. Aunt M'randy, just emerging from this kitchen door, a coal-bucket heaped with ashes in her hand, as Emmy Lou arrived there, paused in her rolling gait, and invited her to go.
Where? Emmy Lou in her little sacque and her round hat hadn't an idea, but seeing that she was expected to accept, took Aunt M'randy's unoccupied hand and went.
And so it was that she found Sister. For Aunt M'randy was going down the length of the back yard, a nice yard with a tree and a bush and what, palpably in a milder hour had been flowers in a border, to the alley-gate to empty the ashes. And beyond this alley gate, outside which stood the barrel they were seeking, in the alley itself, with the cottage shanties of the alley world for background, stood Sister! One knew she was Sister because Aunt M'randy called her so.