P.S. I could have written and spelled it better if I had have taken time and followed this book, the "Polite Letter Writer"; a guy loaned it to me over to State Agricultural. I began this letter with it, but it balled me up so I couldn't keep on and I'm in hopes you will excuse bad writing and spelling. But I aim at a correct and elegant style, dear Sir, in epistolary communication—green grass! maybe when I have more time, Elder, I can do it, but it's no use, I cannot now.
The chaplain read this letter through twice. Then, after docketing and filing it carefully, he rose, and tucking his coat tails under his arm, proceeded to dance gravely up and down the little bare room, singing the song that was his high water mark of joy and triumph:
"Green is for Ireland, Ireland, Ireland,
Green is for Ireland, fiddle dal day!"
The day was named; the day was here. Boards, councils and committees sent each a kindly delegate to the opening of the new Boys' Cottage at Cyrus Poor Farm. The opening was to take place in the afternoon; eight of the ten boys were to be brought over from the city by the president of a certain institution; there were to be addresses and formalities. But a few delegates had been asked to come early, to attend the wedding of the young couple who were to take charge of the new cottage. These delegates came smiling, full of cheerful expectation. This, they told one another, was Lawrence Hadley's venture. Good fellow, Hadley, excellent fellow! Yes, he vouched for this young chap, absolutely. Seemed to be an extraordinary chap; State Agricultural College gone wild over him. Kind of athletic evangelist, it appeared; led 'em all by the nose, they say. This cottage was his idea; yes. And there it was; pretty cottage!
A pretty cottage indeed; red brick, like the mother building which smiles friendly upon it across the green yard; its creepers already started, its flower beds already in bloom; its brass knocker defying the sun. Inside, all fresh and bright, homelike and—full! Full to overflowing, so that the kindly delegates pause astonished, and wonder whence all these people have found their way to so remote a district as North Cyrus. Who are all these people? Come and see!
First, in the shining kitchen, which has walked bodily over, it would appear, from Mr. Aymer's home in the city suburb, who are these two busy, rosy, white-capped and aproned people, man and woman? Why, these are Mr. and Mrs. Baxter, who are preparing the wedding breakfast. Who else should prepare it, they would like to know? Weren't they the first to welcome Pippin when he came to Kingdom? Wasn't he like their own, a son to them, a brother to Buster? Buster is in the shed now, "spelling" Myron at the ice cream freezer, both so eager that they are making five-minute shifts at the handle. Glancing through the open shed door, you may see Jacob Bailey in his Sunday suit, deep in talk with Father O'Brien and Elder Stebbins—pleasant talk, to judge from their faces. From the barn comes Brand, he too in his decent best, threadbare but spotless, carrying in careful hands the wonderful nest of baskets on which his spare hours for the past year have been spent: his wedding present for Pippin and Mary. Look at him! He has never seen light, but we see it in his face.
Who is in the dining-room of the cottage? Mrs. Bailey, of course, with Aunt Mandy Whetstone and Miss Pudgkins. Miss Whetstone opines that if there was need of city folks to do their table settin' for them, it was time they give up! With trembling hands she is laying out on the table the four silver teaspoons and the gravy ladle which commonly repose with her burial money at the bottom of her trunk. The trunk is kept locked, strapped and corded, the key hangs round Miss Whetstone's neck on a string; you never know, and in case of fire, there you are! Miss Pudgkins has no teaspoons, but she has "loaned" for the occasion the chief ornament of her bedroom, a magnificent wreath of "preserved" funeral flowers in a glass case. The cloud on her brow at this moment comes from Mrs. Bailey's kindly but firm refusal to use the wreath for a centrepiece.
"Fresh flowers is rill common!" Miss Pudgkins thinks.