Meantime, odors of frying chicken were wafted to him, along with the smell of slightly burned corn cake and very good coffee. The odors grew stronger and pleasanter and after a time Jim decided that he wasn’t doing right to stay outside while everyone was working in the house. It really was his duty to go in. So in he went. The fire was leaping, the table was set, his mother was bustling around in her calico dress, Azalea was putting the chairs to the table, and his father looked ready primed for a long Sunday grace.
It proved to be even longer than Jim had feared. Thomas McBirney was one of those who count it a fault if they neglect to mention every event of their lives to the Almighty. He thanked the Lord for their united family, for food and fire, for roof and friends, for the privilege of attending divine service, and for the love of God which warmed their hearts. Meantime his son’s eyes wandered restlessly from the heaped plate of chicken to the bowl of gravy and “fixin’s.” He wondered if he would have no more than a “drumstick” and why there should be such intimate relations between boys and drumsticks. The world over, fathers seemed to think they should go to their sons. No doubt Chinese fathers held just the same opinion.
Imagine then, his surprise—his unbelieving surprise—when his father, having first served his mother and Azalea, took the “wish-bone,” beautifully burdened with tender white meat and laid it on Jim’s plate.
“For a good boy,” he said, as he heaped on the potatoes and gravy, and passed the corn bread. “Once in a while, Jim, we men folks have to set ourselves against these here women, eh? Them with their wishbones! Who said they was to eternally have the wishbones? No king that ever I hearn tell of. I say, let’s head a revolution and declare that they ken have only every other wishbone. That’s fair, ain’t it?”
A nice, warm feeling gathered in Jim’s heart. It was splendid to have a dad like that—a dad who could tell what was going on in a fellow’s mind. And his mother and Azalea seemed to be glad he had the wishbone, too. They were looking at him just the way a fellow likes to have his family look at him. My, what a nice day Sunday was! And wasn’t he glad he had helped haul those hickory logs! And wasn’t the room nice, with the settle there next the fire, and the old clock tickin’, tickin’ away, and striking now and then with a voice like Haystack Thompson’s when he led in prayer. And there was a white table cloth on for Sunday, and Ma was smiling almost the way she used before Molly died. And the cat was stretching herself, and outside, Peter, the hound, was sniffling to let them know he was there and hadn’t had his dinner yet.
“Goodness gracious,” sighed Jim, “ain’t it lucky we’re all alive!”
CHAPTER VII
THE SIGNAL
Night came down sweetly over the mountain that quiet day. It wrapped the village in soft gray folds; the stars came out hazily and shone with a misty golden light; the wind merely whispered in the pines and the hemlocks, and the sound of the falling water was lonely and sad in the ears of Azalea.
Yet she had to be out in the night because—well, that’s a secret. At least it was a secret from Jim. Because he would have laughed. She was to signal the other two girls. It had been agreed upon.
“You see, I nearly die, Sundays,” Annie Laurie had said. “Our house—really I can’t describe our house on Sunday. I feel as if my heart were turning into old red sandstone.”