Forty years had she spent apologizing for Abraham, and now she understood how these twenty-nine generous old hearts had raided him to the pedestal of a hero, while she stood a heroine beside him. Angy it was who trembled now, and Abe, gaining a manly courage from that, took hold of her arm to steady her—they had paused on a step near the foot of the stairs—and, looking around with his whimsical smile, he demanded of the bedecked company in general, "Ladies, be yew 'spectin' the President?"
Cackle went the cracked old voices of the twenty-nine in a chorus of appreciative laughter, while the old heads bobbed at one another as if to say, "Won't he be an acquisition?" And then, from among the group there came forward Blossy—Blossy, who had sacrificed most that this should come to pass; Blossy, who had sat till midnight painting the gold-and-blue ribbons; Blossy, the pride and beauty of the Home, in a delicate, old, yellow, real lace gown. She held her two hands gracefully and mysteriously behind her back as she advanced to the foot of the stairs. Looking steadily into Abraham's eyes, she kept a-smiling until he felt as if the warmth of a belated spring had beamed upon him.
"The President!" Her mellow, well-modulated voice shook, and she laughed with a mingling of generous joy and tender pity. "Are we expecting the President? You dear modest man! We are welcoming—you!"
Abe looked to Angy as if to say, "How shall I take it?" and behold! the miracle of his wife's bosom swelling and swelling with pride in him. He turned back, for Blossy was making a speech. His hand to his head, he bent his good ear to listen. In terms poetical and touching she described the loneliness of the life at the Home as it had been with no man under the roof of the house and only a deaf-and-dumb gardener, who hated her sex, in the barn. Then in contrast she painted life as it must be for the sisters now that the thirty tender vines had found a stanch old oak for their clinging. "Me?" queried Abraham of himself and, with another silent glance, of Angy.
But what was this? Blossy, leading all the others in a resounding call of "Welcome!" and then Blossy drawing her two hands from behind her back. One held a huge blue cup, the other, the saucer to match. She placed the cup in the saucer and held it out to Abraham. He trudged down the few steps to receive it, unashamed now of the tears that coursed down his cheeks. With a burst of delight he perceived that it was a mustache cup, such as the one he had always used at home until it had been set for safe-keeping on the top pantry shelf to await the auction, where it had brought the price of eleven cents with half a paper of tacks thrown in.
And now as the tears cleared away he saw also, what Angy's eyes had already noted, the inscription in warm crimson letters on the shining blue side of the cup, "To Our Beloved Brother."
"Sisters," he mumbled, for he could do no more than mumble as he took his gift, "ef yew'd been gittin' ready fer me six months, yew couldn't have done no better."
V
THE HEAD OF THE CORNER
Everybody wore their company manners to the breakfast-table—the first time in the whole history of the Home when company manners had graced the initial meal of the day. Being pleasant at supper was easy enough, Aunt Nancy used to say, for every one save the unreasonably cantankerous, and being agreeable at dinner was not especially difficult; but no one short of a saint could be expected to smile of mornings until sufficient time had been given to discover whether one had stepped out on the wrong or the right side of the bed.