quavered the old voice. And Martha never knew it was not Granny Simmers who sang so joyfully within, but pretty Polly Whitehead in the choir of the old meeting-house, looking on the same hymn-book with handsome young John Simmers, the catch of the valley.
“Just fairly takes my breath away,” wheezed Mrs. Keel, meeting Granny at the door of the church. “Don’t seem like the same place. Now ain’t it pretty?”
Granny caught her breath.
Could this be the little church she knew so well? Before that altar, she, a bride, had stood with John; there they had carried Baby Rastus and Mary for baptism; there the casket had rested that awful day when she had found herself alone.
A crude little sanctuary, always bare and cheerless to the beauty-loving eye, yet rich with tenderest memories to Granny; to-night, ablaze with lights, roped with greenery, gay with flags, joyful with the hum of merry voices, it seemed some new and unexplored fairyland. And there upon the rostrum in all its glory, tall, straight, and beautiful, twinkling with candles, festooned with strings of popcorn and cranberries, glittering with tinsel stars and silver crowns, adorned with bobinet stockings cubby and knubby with candy and nuts, hung with packages big and little, stood the tree, the tree!
“Let me set down till I get my breath, Marthy,” cackled Granny, excitedly. “Jest get my specks out of my pocket, will you, child? My, my! if only John an’ ’Rastus an’ little Mary was here now!”
Sitting straight in the corner of her pew, her spectacles on the extreme end of her nose, her bonnet tipped rakishly to one side in her joy, her black-woolen-mittened hands crossed demurely in her lap, she, the happiest child of them all, listened to the exercise. Carolers and speech-makers found naught but sympathy in her sweet face.
When the last speaker had tiptoed to his seat and the infant class was growing unruly in the amen corner—the sight of the bobinet stockings and mysterious packages being too much for the patience of their baby souls—Brother Knisley carefully mounted the step-ladder and the distribution of the gifts began.
“Billy Keel, Tessie Miller—Dora Jackson, Mrs. Sallie Biddle,” haltingly read the Brother. The sight of Sallie’s wild delight over the red plush album almost moved Granny to tears. “Mrs. Polly Simmers, Martha Morris—Mrs. Polly Simmers, Mrs. Joel Keel—Mrs. Polly Simmers,” then again and again until the pew in which Granny sat was filled and overflowed into her lap. Wide-eyed, at first happy, then more and more distressed grew the small face under its rakish bonnet.
“Mrs. Polly Simmers, Miss Nelly Sanford—Mrs. Polly Simmers—” Oh, would they never cease? Martha, chuckling with joy, gathered them in one by one.