“Oh, you’ll see it all Sunday!” Blue told him at last, his patience showing marks of breaking down.
“It is nice to know just how it will look,” Doodles replied innocently. “Seems as if I couldn’t wait a whole day longer!” He paused before venturing his next thought. “Do you—” he began, and then changed to the negative, “you don’t s’pose they’d have any flowers—it’s ’most winter, you know—you don’t s’pose they would—?” Face and voice were anxious.
The elder boy’s acquaintance with church customs was not intimate, and it was early December! There were greenhouses, of course, like June gardens; but—Blue was doubtful, more than doubtful. Yet he strengthened his brother’s hope in no uncertain words. There’d be enough else to make up, he argued in self-defense, and to-day it was important that anticipation should be full.
The small boy awoke early. On yesterday’s sunset horizon a bank of cloud had suggested rain, and that was Doodles’s first thought; he hardly dared to look at the tiny patch of sky visible through the kitchen window from where he lay. But when he tremblingly peered out from the little dark bedroom his heart gave a leap—the patch was blue! Smiling contentedly, he snuggled down on his pillow. What a beautiful day it was going to be! The next time he opened his eyes, his mother was waiting at the bedside, and the smell of breakfast came pleasantly from the kitchen.
Dressing took longer than usual, because of the unfamiliar garments, and the spirit of excitement that pervaded everything—even the stockings, which wouldn’t pull up straight. But that and breakfast were over, at last, and Doodles resting among his cushions. He was wondering what the choir would sing, and wishing their choice would fall on “Only an Armour-Bearer” or “Jerusalem, the Golden,”—to which tune his mother was now putting away her dishes,—when somebody knocked on the door.
A uniformed messenger handed Mrs. Stickney a bit of folded paper.
She opened and read the note, staring at the words with a dismayed face.
“No,—no answer,” she replied to the boy’s query, but without turning her head. She still stood there, looking down on the paper with unseeing eyes, while the messenger’s retreating footsteps came faintly from below.
“What is it?” Blue emerged from the bedroom, clad in trousers and a bath towel.
“You can’t go!” exclaimed Mrs. Stickney in disheartened tones.