“Grandma,” said Alice one evening when she and Bobby and Pink had come into Grandma’s room, “do you believe that if you look over your right shoulder at the new moon and make a wish that it will come true?”
“Naw,” jeered Bobby, “course not.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Grandma answered thoughtfully. “A wish made that way could come true. I made a wish once over a white horse and a red-haired girl that came true.”
“Tell us about it Grandma. Please tell us,” coaxed Alice.
Grandma found her knitting and began.
“The red-haired girl,” she said, “was Betty Bard, our preacher’s granddaughter. She had lived at the parsonage with her grandparents for nearly a year, and next to Annie Brierly she was my best friend. The white horse belonged to old Mrs. Orbison, who with several other women had come to help sister Belle quilt her ‘Rose of Sharon.’
“Betty and I were playing under the apple tree in the side yard. That is, we were trying to play. We couldn’t find any game we liked. We kept thinking that this might be our last afternoon together. You see, conference was to meet the next week, and Betty didn’t seem to think her grandfather would be sent back to preach on Redding circuit. I didn’t think so either. Redding circuit was very hard to please, and though Father never found fault with any of our preachers and always paid his tithes, still I knew that Brother Bard was not popular. Betty said it was because he did good by stealth and no one ever found it out.
“‘If I move away,’ said Betty as we sat under the apple tree talking that afternoon, ‘you may have my playhouse rock at school, Sarah, and all my dahlia roots, and the black kitten. The kitten’s name is Bad Boy because he jumps on the table when no one is looking. And you must be sure to dig the dahlias up before frost.’
“Just then Mrs. Orbison’s voice floated out through the open sitting-room window.
“‘It all depends on the sermon he preaches tomorrow,’ she said. ‘If they don’t like it, a letter goes to the Presiding Elder saying we will not tolerate Brother Bard another year and that in case he is sent back against our wishes we will not pay him anything.’