David Fleming's Forgiveness

by Margaret M. Robertson

“And as it’s a leisure time, you must do what you can to help with the rest, and all the more as I canna spare Katie. And she will have preparations to make at home. But we’ll hear more about it, it is likely.”

“Plenty more, grannie. Oh, yes; I’ll help. It is to be a grand occasion.”

“But the preparing beforehand is the best of all, they say,” said Katie.

But even her grandmother was as well pleased that Katie should have nothing to do with general preparations. All sorts of young people were to help, and it could hardly be but that some foolish things should be said and done where there was so much to excite and nothing to restrain, and her Katie’s name was as well to be kept out of it all. But she put no limit as to the preparations that were to be made at home in the way of cakes and tartlets and little pats of butter, for it was to be a great occasion for Gershom.

There had been demonstrations of this kind before in Gershom and the vicinity. Indeed, this was a favourite way of promoting the cause of temperance, as it has more recently become the favourite way of promoting other causes in Canada. In some spot chosen for general convenience a great many people assembled. The greater the number the greater the good accomplished, it was supposed. The usual plan was for parties of friends to keep together, and either before or after the speech-making—which was supposed to be the chief interest of the day—to seek some suitable spot in field or grove for the enjoyment in common of the many nice things stored in the baskets with which all were supplied.

But Gershom folk aimed at something beyond the usual way. In Finlay Grove, which had been chosen as the place of meeting, tables were to be set up and covered for—

“Well—we’ll say five hundred people,” Clifton Holt suggested at one of the meetings for the settling of preliminaries. “And let us show them what Gershom can do.”

Of course he did not know in the least what he was undertaking for Gershom in this off-hand way, nor did any one else till it was too late to change the plan. Not that there was any serious thought of changing it. The honour of Gershom was at stake, and “to spend and be spent” for this—to say nothing of “the cause”—seemed to be the general desire.

Davie Fleming did his part well. He drew loads of boards from the saw-mill, and loads of crockery from the various village stores. He helped to fix the tables and many seats, and to build the platform for “the speakers from a distance,” vaguely promised as a part of the day’s feast. Indeed, he distinguished himself by his zeal and efficiency, and was in such request that he was obliged to promise that he would be on the ground early in the morning of the day to help about whatever might still have to be done.

He had got quite into the spirit of it by this time. It was great fun, he said, and he was a little ashamed of the part he had taken in keeping Katie out of it all. So he proposed that she should go with him that morning and stay for an hour or two. She could go quite easily, he said, for he could put her over the river on a raft which he had made for his own convenience, to save the walk round by the bridge. But Katie could not be spared. The children were all expected to go with the Scott’s Corner Sunday-school to the High-School, from thence to walk with several other Sunday-schools in procession to the Grove, and Katie must help to get them ready and see them off. When Davie came back at noon he had some news to give her.