"Aren't you sorry, don't you want to?" pleaded Marjorie, laying her warm fingers on the hard old hand.
"I'm afraid," whispered the trembling voice. "I never was good enough."
"Oh, dear," sighed Marjorie, her eyes brimming over, "I don't know how to tell you about it. But won't you listen to the minister, he talks so plainly, and he'll tell you not to be afraid."
"They don't go to communion, my son nor his wife; they don't ask me to."
"But they want you to; I know they want you to—before you die," persuaded Marjorie. "You are so old now."
"Yes, I'm old. And you shall read to me out of the Testament before you go. Hepsie reads to me, but she gets to crying before she's half through; she can't find 'peace,' she says."
"I wish she could," said Marjorie, almost despairingly.
"Now I'll tell you a story," began the old voice in a livelier tone. "I have to talk about more than fifty years ago—I forget about other things, but I remember when I was young. I'm glad things happened then, for I can remember them."
"Didn't things happen afterward?" asked Marjorie, laughing.
"Not that I remember."