“Our church couldn’t pay the minister this Winter,” she said, “on account of the new church-building. So the minister and his wife are boarding around with the congregation. To-morrow’s their day to come here for a week. It’s a hard life and I didn’t have the heart to change ’em.”
Her family covered their regret as best they could and entered upon her little feast. At the head of her table, with her four “children” about her, and father’s armchair left vacant, they perceived that she was not quite the figure they had been thinking her. In this interval they had grown to think of her as a pathetic figure. Not because their father had died, not because she insisted on Springvale as a residence, not because of her eyes. Just pathetic. Mothers of grown children, they might have given themselves the suggestion, were always pathetic. But here was mother, a definite person with poise and with ideas, who might be proud of her offspring, but who, in her heart, never forgot that they were her offspring and that she was the parent stock.
“I wouldn’t eat two pieces of that pie,” she said to President Tilton; “it’s pretty rich.” And he answered humbly: “Very well, mother.” And she took with composure Ricky’s light chant:
“Now, you must remember, wherever you are,
That you are the jam, but your mother’s the jar.”
“Certainly, my children,” she said. “And I’m about to tell you when you may have your Christmas presents. Not to-night. Christmas eve is no proper time for presents. It’s stealing a day outright. And you miss the fun of looking forward all night long. The only proper time for the presents is after breakfast on Christmas morning, after the dishes are washed. The minister and his wife may get here any time from nine on. That means we’ve got to get to bed early!”
President Arthur Tilton lay in his bed looking at the muslin curtain on which the street-lamp threw the shadow of a bare elm which he remembered. He thought:
“She’s a pioneer spirit. She’s the kind who used to go ahead any way, even if they had missed the emigrant party, and who used to cross the plains alone. She’s the backbone of the world. I wish I could megaphone that to the students at Briarcliff who think their mothers ‘try to boss’ them!”
“Don’t leave your windows open too far,” he heard from the hall. “The wind’s changed.”
In the light of a snowy morning the home parlor showed the cluttered commonplace of a room whose furniture and ornaments were not believed to be beautiful and most of them known not to be useful. Yet when—after the dishes were washed—these five came to the leather chair which bore the gifts, the moment was intensely satisfactory. This in spite of the sense of haste with which the parcels were attacked—lest the minister and his wife arrive in their midst.