Early candlelight stories

by Stella C. Shetter

“‘Why, they put them in the church, and after a while they will sell them,’ she said. ‘You run and find Mother now, like a good girl.’

“‘But the boxes aren’t on the pulpit,’ I whispered. ‘I was in the church hunting Mother, and the boxes are all gone and the sheet is lying on the floor.’

“Belle told the others, and they all went hurrying into the church, I following after. The boxes were gone, sure enough. The pulpit windows, which faced a strip of woods, were open. The boys said the boxes could have been taken out that way as the crowd was in front of the church. There was no place in the church to hide them. There was a loft, but it was entered through a hole in the ceiling and there was no ladder. Belle placed two chairs with their seats touching and covered them with the sheet so that no one could tell the boxes were not there.

“‘It looks as if some of the people who don’t want the organ have spoiled this box supper,’ said John Strang, ‘and they will keep us from having our organ for a while, too.’

“‘But that isn’t the worst of it,’ put in Isabel. ‘It’ll cause no end of trouble and hard feelings.’

“‘It may have been some of the boys who did it for a joke,’ said Belle. ‘Let us raise the money anyway and get ahead of them.’

“‘But how,’ Isabel asked anxiously, ‘with no boxes?’

“Then they thought out their plan. It was that John and Will were to go out and explain quietly to the boys in favor of the organ what had happened and get them to give the money they meant to spend on their boxes to John. Brother Joe had bought a new pair of shoes in town. They would put his shoe box up for sale just as if all the rest of the boxes were still under the sheet. Will was to bid against John and run the box up to the amount they had collected.

“Isabel stayed in the church to see that no one disturbed the sheet, and John and Will and Belle went outside to carry out their plan. I found Mother, and pretty soon we went into the church. The lamps had been lit, and I thought how nice it looked. The girls had come up the day before and swept the floor and dusted the benches and shined the tin reflectors on the lamps, and put great bunches of flowers and ferns over the doors and windows and covered the two big round stoves with boughs of evergreen. There was a short program first, and then Stanley, who was to auction off the boxes, stepped to the front of the pulpit and held up a plain white box tied with stout string.