I said it for her.
"Good! Now, tonight after you say it, I want you to walk through the church with your papa's hat, and everybody will put in money. That will be for poor people. Then you come back to me, and I'll get some of the little presents off the tree and pin them on you. Then you'll walk up and down the aisle so that folks can take off their gifts. What do you think of that? Can you do it?"
"Oh, yes Ma'am! I can do it!"
On our way home I thought I'd absolutely pop wide open with excitement. But I never did. At supper I gulped down a whole big glass of buttermilk with corn bread crumbled in it, and not a drop leaked out of me! Even after we got our stockings hung up and our Sunday clothes on, I was still in good shape.
I kept whispering my Aunt Vic piece over and over to myself. But as we were going back toward the church, Mierd and Wiley talked so long about how many nuts and apples and oranges we might get in our stockings that I forgot every word Aunt Vic wanted me to recite!
"Don't cry, for goodness sakes!" Mama told me. "Aunt Vic will tell you again what to say."
It was dusk before we got within sight of the grist mill and cotton gin. Mierd and Wiley were quiet. Mama wasn't saying much either.
When we were about halfway between the gin and Papa's new store, three men on horseback streaked past our wagon, their horses running neck and neck!
"I wonder," Mama said, "who's in such an all-fired hurry to get to the Christmas entertainment."
"That's just them Bailey boys," Wiley said.