“Well, well! Well, well!” said the deacon.
The church in another part of the parish was being repaired, so the people from there came to the service in Uncle’s church in Sandvaag. Their deacon came, too, and Deacon Vebjornsen and he tried to see which could sing loudest. Neither would give up. Never in my life have I seen or heard any one sing as the two deacons did that Christmas day in Sandvaag church. They stood erect in the pew, both with their mouths stretched wide open. I expected every minute that they would burst something inside of them.
Above the piercing sounds the two deacons made, came Uncle’s dear voice from the pulpit, sweet and mellow and kind.
It made me think of Mother, and I had to try with all my might to keep from crying. I couldn’t bear that any one should see me crying in church.
Uncle invited ever so many to go to the Parsonage to dinner; —two sailors with their wives, three school-teachers and a widow with three children. Great-Aunt stood out in the kitchen, crimson in the face, and awfully provoked at Uncle.
“Did you ever see such a man?” she burst out. “He goes and invites eleven strangers to dinner without my having any idea of it; and the roast will be too small. The three teachers are equal to eating up all the princess pudding, just themselves alone, and—oh, I wish I were thirty feet under ground!—But I could have told you beforehand that this would happen. I could have told you!”
Aunt Magda had to go out to comfort her, and it took much coaxing to get Great-Aunt to go to the dinner-table.
“There are people enough there already,” she said.
When she was at the table she kept urging and insisting that the three teachers should eat more and more of the French beans for she knew there were plenty of them.
I should like to tell you that we had a pleasant time after dinner that Christmas Day; but to tell the plain truth, I was perfectly bored.