Jimmie had prepared the way as best he could. The desk was pushed back against the blackboard, and covered with a fair linen cloth, and the Bishop’s beautiful Cross stood on it, with the white roses on either side. There was no organ, but Jimmie and the Murray children led the singing, as they were familiar with the canticles and responses, and the girls joined in. The sermon was not at all like a sermon. It was the warmest, tenderest, best kind of a talk. The tall young Bishop stepped down from the little platform that had served as chancel, and talked directly to them, calling them by name.
“I hear,” he said, “there has never been a Confirmation here at the Forks. Then we’ll have one in the spring. There are plenty of children to gather for this, and grown people too. Donald and Margaret Murray, James here, and the Dickerman twins—”
’Lisbeth Brumell rose determindedly in her seat at this point. She was a little woman, with a sad, tired face, the face of a woman who had found the wilderness too hard to bear.
“I know it ain’t right for me to speak up during service,” she said, brokenly, “but I only wanted to say you can count me in too, Bishop, when you round up the lot.”
“Well, I’m glad poor ’Lisbeth got that off her mind,” said Mrs. Murray, thoughtfully, after they had returned home. “She’s always wanted a staff to lean on, and it will make her daily grind easier.”
“What’s the matter with her, Mrs. Murray?” asked Isabel.
“Lonesomeness, most likely. She made up her mind to be lonesome all her life, and she was a terribly disappointed girl.”
“How?”
“She didn’t marry the lad she wanted to. He went over Thunder Ridge twenty-two years ago, in the big blizzard, with fourteen hundred cattle. I’m glad she’s going to find rest at last.”
“Girls, girls,” exclaimed Polly, her eyes bright with excitement, when they started for a walk after dinner that night. “Grandfather was saying not long ago that people were getting tired of churches, and out here—”