It was only a moment more before the music was pealing; the Superintendent had made his short speech, as president of the School Board, Martin Moreland was telling what increasingly wonderful work was done each year by the youth of the town, how well deserved were the sheepskins that he was now to bestow upon them. The boys were trying to figure out a problem none of them had remembered to concentrate upon—how they least awkwardly might accept and dispose of the beribboned roll thrust at them. They did not know whether to hold it like a ball bat or a fan. It took the daring of Junior Moreland to make of it a trumpet through which he sent a message to his shocked mother in the audience. It was only a few seconds later that Jemima Davis was on her knees in front of Mahala gathering into the folds of a widely spread sheet every tribute, large and small, bearing the girl’s name.
Guarding like a soldier the beautiful baskets and the sheaf, she whispered to Mahala: “Who sent you them lilies and roses, darlin’?”
Mahala leaned to Jemima’s ear to respond: “Hunt through them carefully, Jemima. If you find a note, you will hide it for me, won’t you, old dearest dear?”
Jemima answered convincingly: “You just bet your sweet life I will!”
So with a heart of contentment, Mahala led the procession down the aisle, climbed into the omnibus before her parents had a chance to object, and with the others was carried away to the banquet at the Newberry House.
The big dining room filled speedily. Ranged around the long centre table, having the graduates at one end, their parents at the other, were smaller tables for the alumni, the School Board, the teachers, and the invited guests of the graduates. The centre table was the pinnacle of fame that night. The flushed, happy graduates, free of a haunting fear of weeks’ duration on the part of most of them, could now laugh and talk and be natural, the result of a whole school life of association. The other end of the table had its troubles. When the Morelands, the Spellmans, and the Williamses undertook to break bread and indulge in social intercourse with the Schlotzensmelters, the Bowers, and the Prices of the town, the situation soon became painful. The upper dog tried to be condescending; the under dog resented it, and speedily lost out by not knowing how to handle napkins, an array of cutlery, and a queer assortment of fancy food that belonged in strange places. Pa Schlotzensmelter, irritated beyond caution, audibly asked his wife: “Vere do I pud dose celery?” And Jimmy Price hastened to answer: “In your mouth.” The Schlotzensmelters were outraged, but later their revenge was sweet when Jimmy took a drink from the rose-geranium scented finger bowl, whose use he had not observed by his neighbours, and passed it on to his wife, who followed his example!
The arising from the table was in the nature of a blessed release on the part of the elders. With the graduating class in the lead, the assemblage moved across the street to the dance hall.
Flushed and happy, Mahala stood on the floor, one little qualm of dread in her heart. In that slight interval of waiting for the music to begin, Elizabeth and Mahlon had their first chance at their offspring. Mahala saw them coming and knew that her hour of explanation was upon her. They never would understand how simple it had been. She smiled on them without guile and took the initiative in self-protection.
“I was just hoping for a word with you,” she cried. “Were you badly frightened? You see, it was this way——”
“A very charming way,” said Mahlon, gallantly kissing his daughter’s hand. “Very charming! Your audience was with you. What more need be said?”