“Yes, I see you groaning and sighing,” retorted his wife, pinching his arm as she took the baby from him. “You’d take a crowbar and break in the front door of the first house you came to, and then you’d bless all the people in the house and crawl in the best bed and go to sleep.”
She ran with the baby in her arms, away from his pretended anger, and he turned his attention once more to the kitchen fire, singing under his breath:
“And though this world with demons filled,
Should threaten to undo-oo-oo us—”
The world might be filled with demons, but it was quite evident that they had not succeeded in breaking into the house of the Rev. Absalom Summers. They had not put their clutches on his little brown wife nor on his golden-haired baby son. They were not in the bright little kitchen, where she hastily prepared the morning meal, and they did not sit down at the table with the family while the head of the house said grace in clear and decisive tones which could leave no chance for any inattention on the part of Providence.
“Oh, dear Master of the World and of this little house,” prayed the good man, “we thank Thee for this bright morning and for the flowers and clouds and birds which have helped to make it beautiful. We thank Thee that we, here beneath this roof, love each other with whole hearts. We thank Thee for the little child that sits here at our board, and for his health and smiles, and from the bottom of our hearts we pray Thee to give us wisdom to lead him in the paths of goodness. And we thank Thee for the little wanderer who sleeps a stranger in our house. If she be motherless, give us joy in mothering her; and if she be fatherless, we commit her to Thy all knowing care—beg for her Thy abounding love and mercy. May no fear come in her heart when first she looks upon us. May she see at once the tenderness we feel for her. And if it be Thy will that she shall unite her life with ours, may we have heart of grace to take her as a gift from Thee. Amen.”
“Amen,” breathed Mrs. Barbara, wiping her eyes.
“Amen,” laughed baby Jonathan.
And then they all fell to and ate with the best of appetites.
Then, while they lingered over their meal, and the Rev. Absalom talked about the ride he ought to take to Sessions to see old Mrs. Underwood, who had cancer, and while Mrs. Barbara decided that perhaps she’d better not start her blue chally that day when she was likely to have so much on her mind, and while baby Jonathan was wondering when, when he would be let down on the floor to crawl after that nice hairy caterpillar, there came a great knocking at the door.
“Old Bill Jones!” cried the preacher. “What a fist the man has! Who can it be, Barbara?” It was no easy matter for the master of the house to uncoil his long legs and get them out from under the table. So it was little Mrs. Barbara who opened the door to admit a man quite as tall as her own Absalom—a man with no hat and a great shock of hair, and a fiddle under his arm. He nodded to Mrs. Summers, but looked over her head at the man and shouted: