The tree, by this time, was nearly empty. Every child had been remembered, save one, and that the organ boy, who, separated from his companions, stood near Helen, watching the tree wistfully, while shadows of hope and disappointment passed alternately over his face, as one after another the presents were distributed and nothing came to him.
“There ain’t a darned thing on it for me,” he exclaimed at last, when boy nature could endure no longer; and Mark turned towards him just in time to see the gathering mist, which but for the most heroic efforts would have merged into tears.
“Poor Billy!” Helen said, as she too heard his comment, “I fear he has been forgotten. His teacher is absent, and he so faithful at the organ too.”
Mark knew now who the boy was, and after a hurried consultation with Helen, who suggested that money would probably be more acceptable than even skates or jack-knives, neither of which were possible now, folded something in a bit of paper, on which he wrote a name, and then sent it to the Rector.
“Billy Brown, our faithful organ boy,” sounded through the church; and with a brightened face Billy went up the aisle and received the little package, ascertaining before he reached his standpoint near the door, that he was the owner of a five dollar bill, and mentally deciding to add both peanuts and molasses candy to the stock of apples he daily carried into the cars.
“You gin me this,” he said, nodding to Mark, “and you,” turning to Helen, “poked him up to it.”
“Well then, if I did,” Mark replied, laying his hand on the boy’s coarse hair, “you must take good care of Miss Lennox when I am gone. I leave her in your charge. She is to be my wife.”
“Gorry, I thought so;” and Bill’s cap went towards the plastering, just as the last string of pop-corn was given from the tree, and the exercises were about to close.
It was not in Aunt Betsy’s nature to keep her secret till this time; and simultaneously with Billy’s going up for his gift, she whispered it to her neighbor, who whispered it to hers, who whispered it to hers, until nearly all the audience knew of it, and kept their seats after the benediction was pronounced.
At a sign from the rector, Katy went with her mother to the altar, followed by Uncle Ephraim, his wife, and Aunt Betsy, while Helen, throwing off the cloud she had worn upon her head, and giving it, with her cloak and fur, into Billy’s charge, took Mark’s arm, and with beating heart and burning cheeks passed between the sea of eyes fixed so curiously upon her, up to where Katy once stood on the June morning, when she had been the bride. Not now, as then, were aching hearts present at the bridal. No Marian Hazelton fainted by the door; no Morris felt the world grow dark and desolate as the marriage vows were spoken; and no sister doubted if it were all right and would end in happiness.