So Alice told Grandma about chapel that morning. She told her about the recitations and songs by the children and of a lady who had whistled “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “America.”
“Well, well, wasn’t that nice!” Grandma said. “I should have liked to hear that. I always admired to hear any one whistle. I believe I’ll tell you tonight about the time I whistled in meeting.”
The children drew their stools a little closer, and Grandma began:
“When I was a little girl, I wanted more than anything else to be able to whistle. I kept this ambition to myself because it wasn’t considered ladylike for girls to whistle. My mother often said,
“A whistling girl and a crowing hen
Always come to some bad end.”
“So I never told anyone, not even my brother Charlie, that I wanted to whistle. But when I hunted turkey hens’ nests, or went after the cows, or picked berries, I had my lips pursed all the time trying to whistle as my brothers did. But, though I tried and tried, I never succeeded in making a sound.
“One Sunday in meeting I got awfully tired. To a little girl the sermons were very long and tiresome in those days. For a while I sat still and quiet, watching Preacher Hill’s beard jerk up and down as he talked and looking at the queer shadows his long coat tails made on the wall. But it was warm and close in the church, and after a while I grew drowsy.
“‘Oh, dear!’ I thought to myself, ‘I mustn’t go to sleep. I must keep awake somehow.’ Then I thought about whistling. I would practice whistling to myself—under my breath.
“The seats were high-backed and we sat far to the front. I could not see any one except the preacher and John Strang, who kept company with sister Belle. John sat in a chair at the end of the choir facing the congregation, and several times I noticed him looking curiously at me as if he wondered what I was doing. I would draw in my breath very slowly and then let it out again. Of course I never dreamed of making a sound, and no one could have been more surprised than I was when there came from my lips a loud clear whistle as sweet as a bird note.