Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 34
ALREADY before school closed its gates upon him, Robert had been growing up, and each day took him away from Sara, who remained hopelessly imbedded in the early innocence of babyhood.
What he thought of Sara he let out one Sunday morning when Sara was first to appear in Sunday school.
"I'm not going to take Sara to Sunday School," he announced, "unless she'll learn who Christ is." He looked at his sister with disapproval. His attitude toward her was that of a sensitive young man of twenty, towards a sister afflicted with the giggles. Silly was what he thought Sara was. "There isn't another child of her age," he went on, "who doesn't know who Christ is. Every child knows—only Sara. She won't learn—she don't care. And why don't she care? It's because she can't stand religion."
"I can too," came from Sara, who was sitting on the floor making a long circus procession from the animals in Jamie's Noah's Ark.
"You don't. You don't even know who Noah was. You play all day with Noah's Ark and you don't even know who Noah is. She's like that," he confided to his mother. "She's just as thick, she's just as dumb."
"Thick! dumb!" thought Alice to herself. Here were the fruits of public school.
"I do know who Noah is," said Sara belligerently.
"Who is he?" said Robert the inquisitor.
"He's the one what the whale et," replied Sara with assurance.
"There, there, you see? That's the way she goes on! I tell her who Christ is—I tell her time and again. Then what does she say? You tell Mother who Christ is."
"Christ's the Sun-God," lisped Sara.
"That's what she always says when she doesn't call him Crust! Jesus Crust is what she says and you want me to take her to Sunday School! You want I should have five fights on my hands with boys laughing at Sara?"
"Come, come," said Tom, "you nag your sister in the most awful fashion. Sara knows as well as you do that Christ is the Son of God. Why shouldn't she know? She's heard nothing else since she was born."
"Yes, why shouldn't she," echoed Robert gloomily, "and why shouldn't she know who George Washington is; and why shouldn't she know who Christopher Columbus is? Bet you Jamie knows. He knows more than Sara does and he's only three."
"I do know who George Washington is. He's the one who discovered America."
"There! You see? I won't go a place with her before she knows the difference between George Washington, Christopher Columbus, and Jesus Christ. I spend afternoons telling her—yes, and mornings, about which was the father of our country, and which discovered America, but she won't remember."
"And you know why I won't; and you know why I can't 'member, Robert Marcey! It's because those old men are none of 'em interesting."