"Minna, Minna!" Mary Cary lifted the excited little face from her shoulder and kissed her lips. "Your grandfather died before you were born, but you remembered splendidly to-night. I don't see—"
"Pooh! That wasn't anything!" Minna's eyes were raised to the ceiling. "All I've got to do is to hear a thing and I can say it. I can say Shakespeare if you want me to."
Mary Cary got up. "Mercy, no! Don't say anything else if you love me. Run back to Peggy and keep still for just a minute more." She stood at the table, looking at Mrs. McDougal speaking to Hedwig, who a moment later came back with a large knife and handed it to her, and, as she took it, Mary Cary dropped back into her chair.
Flourishing the knife, Mrs. McDougal advanced to the cake, then turned to the others sitting stiff and upright in their chairs, and bowed again. "The ceremonies is over and the cake will be cut. And then maybe you'll open your mouths and say something. You're settin' like you're at a funeral. Then resolutions sounded like it, but you mustn't mind them, Miss Mary"—she turned to the latter in a whisper—"they didn't have much time to make up anything, and I asked Miss Samson just to let 'em say something from their hearts, and they thought resolutions was more dignified than plain every-day speech, and more respectful. I asked for a testimony and for Minna Haskins to say it. She's such a little devil and so fond of you. Maybe now you'd like to say something yourself?" She rapped on the table for silence. "Miss Cary would like to say something, and when she's through we'll eat."
For half a moment Mary Cary leaned against the library table, her hands behind her clasping it with an intensity of which she was not conscious, and for a moment more words would not come. Slowly the hot color died out of her face and her lips quivered.
"No," she said, presently. "No. I can't say anything. When we feel much we can say little, and I couldn't tell you how you have—have humbled me; but I do thank you for your kind, kind words. It is not I you should thank, however. I have done so little. I could have done nothing had it not been for Yorkburg's friend. I had nothing to give but—"
"Love, which is what few have, judging by the sparse way it's handed out." Mrs. McDougal stuck the knife in the cake and left it there, then waved her hand. "Go on! Go on!"
"I had only—love to give when I came back, and love by itself can't do what it would. It needs money to help. Money without love may not be much, but love with money—" Her voice broke.
"Is hard to beat. Just tell you friend we thank him hearty, or her if it's a her. When love and money married get, their children will be great, you bet." Mrs. McDougal threw back her head, and her hearty laugh was joined in by none more heartily than Miss Gibbie, who used the opportunity to put her handkerchief to her nose and keep it there awhile. "Bless my soul, if I ain't made a rhyme! Thirty-seven and never did it before! Luck and accidents come to all, my grandmother used to say, and when I speaks poetry on the spot it's both together. I'm real proud of myself, that I am! That's all right, Miss Mary; don't you try to say nothin'. We understand you, and we just want you to understand us." She pulled her by the sleeve. "There's Miss Hedwig standin' in the door lookin' at you. Goodness gracious! If she ain't gone and set a spread on the dining-room table, and me ready to cut the cake this minute! Looks like we're goin' to have a party, after all. Miss Mary, you blow out this candle, and I'll light it again when we get in the dining-room." She dropped her voice. "Here, get behind me and wipe your eyes if you want to. Got a handkerchief? Ain't our eyes funny? Trickle when there ain't a bit of sense in it. Are you through?" She lifted the cake triumphantly. "My! but I'm glad I'm livin'! If there's anything I do love in life 'tis a party, and I ain't been to one since I married McDougal, and that's more'n nineteen years ago!"