us see it! Here I’ve been standing off, pluming myself on being too wise to mix up in the fuss, when I ought to have been doing my best to bring folks together. What a difference it does make, the way you see a thing!”
He looked round upon the group, scanning one stirred face after another as the ruddy firelight illumined them. His glance finally rested on his daughter Nan. She too sat upon the floor, on a plump red cushion, with her back against her husband’s knee. Somehow Nan and Sam were never far apart, at times like these. The youngest of the house of Fernald had made perhaps the happiest marriage of them all, and the knowledge of this gave her father and mother great satisfaction. The sight of the pair, returning his scrutiny, with bright faces, gave John Fernald his next comment.
“After the preachers, I guess
Nancy and Samuel deserve about the most credit,” he went on. “It was the little girl’s idea, and Sam stood by her, right through.” He began to chuckle. “I can see Sam now, towing those two old fellows up to the pulpit. I don’t believe they’d ever have got there without him. There certainly is a time when a man’s hand on your arm makes it a good deal easier to go where you know you ought to go.”
“It would have taken more than my hand to tow them away,” said Sam Burnett, “after they found out how it felt to be friends again. Nobody could come between them now, with an axe.”
“The music helped,” cried Nan, “the music helped more than anything, except the sermon. Think how Margaret worked over that!—and Carolyn over that crazy little old organ! And Guy and Ed and Charles hung all those greens——”
“I tacked the pulpit stair-carpet,” put in Oliver, gravely. “While you’re assigning credit, don’t forget that.”
“I stoked those stoves,” asserted Ralph. “That left-hand one—Christopher! —I never saw a stove like that to hand out smoke in your face. But the church was warm when I got through with ’em.”
“You all did wonderfully well,” came Mother Fernald’s proud and happy declaration.
“All but me,” said a voice, from the centre of the group. It was a voice which nobody had ever expected to hear in an acknowledgment of failure of any sort whatsoever, and all ears listened in amazement.