“I never knew before what it meant in the Bible where it says, ‘The strength of the hills is his also.’ Wonderful! wonderful!”
“Eh?” asked Aunt Betty, only a dim comprehension of what Marion meant having crept in beneath the big red hood that covered her head.
Marion repeated the verse, and to her surprise her aunt answered it with, “‘Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying grace! grace unto it.’” Not a word did she offer in explanation; she only twitched the horse’s head more emphatically, and did not speak again until she reached the meeting-house door.
What a desolate-looking audience-room it was! Up in one corner roared a big iron stove, which, do its best, failed to warm but a few feet of the spaces around it. A gray-bearded minister in his overcoat was reading from the pulpit a hymn, as they went in, and a dozen people, most of them men, were scattered round in the bare pews.
They all looked pleased to see an addition to their number, and some nodded to Aunt Betty; all stared at the new-comer.
There was no sermon, but a short address, which Marion strove to remember, that she might repeat it to her father, as having come from the old pulpit before which he had worshipped as a boy; but, 156 do her best to be attentive and decorous, her teeth chattered, and the “Amen” was to her the most interesting part of the services.
The ride home was even colder than the one to the meeting; for a brisk north-east wind had risen, and came howling down from the mountains in strong, long gusts that betokened a coming storm.
Dan obstinately refused to move one foot faster than he chose, and before they reached home they were thoroughly and, indeed, dangerously benumbed with the cold.
Little thought had they of Thanksgiving, as they clung to the warm stove and listened to the rising of the wind. It was Marion who first remembered the day, and looked about for some way of keeping it. Poor, pinched, half-frozen Aunt Betty had entirely forgotten it.
Now Marion made herself perfectly at home. She found old-fashioned china that would have been held precious in many houses, decorating with it the table in a deft and tasteful way that warmed lonely Aunt Betty’s heart, as she watched her, more than the blazing fire could; and while she worked, she talked, or sang little snatches of college songs learned at school, which rippled out in her rich voice with a melody never heard in the old farmhouse before.