“It’s pretty hard sometimes, though,” sighed Sara. “Ma scolds so much when I do tell her things, that it sort of discourages me. But when I think of how dreadful I felt the time of the Judgment Day over deceiving her in some things it nerves me up. I’d do almost anything rather than feel like that the next time the Judgment Day comes.”
“Fe, fi, fo, fum, I smell a story,” said Uncle Blair. “What do you mean by speaking of the Judgment Day in the past tense?”
The Story Girl told him the tale of that dreadful Sunday in the preceding summer and we all laughed with him at ourselves.
“All the same,” muttered Peter, “I don’t want to have another experience like that. I hope I’ll be dead the next time the Judgment Day comes.”
“But you’ll be raised up for it,” said Felix.
“Oh, that’ll be all right. I won’t mind that. I won’t know anything about it till it really happens. It’s the expecting it that’s the worst.”
“I don’t think you ought to talk of such things,” said Felicity.
When evening came we all went to Golden Milestone. We knew the Awkward Man and his bride were expected home at sunset, and we meant to scatter flowers on the path by which she must enter her new home. It was the Story Girl’s idea, but I don’t think Aunt Janet would have let us go if Uncle Blair had not pleaded for us. He asked to be taken along, too, and we agreed, if he would stand out of sight when the newly married pair came home.
“You see, father, the Awkward Man won’t mind us, because we’re only children and he knows us well,” explained the Story Girl, “but if he sees you, a stranger, it might confuse him and we might spoil the homecoming, and that would be such a pity.”
So we went to Golden Milestone, laden with all the flowery spoil we could plunder from both gardens. It was a clear amber-tinted September evening and far away, over Markdale Harbour, a great round red moon was rising as we waited. Uncle Blair was hidden behind the wind-blown tassels of the pines at the gate, but he and the Story Girl kept waving their hands at each other and calling out gay, mirthful jests.