Celia’s sensitive face flushed, and she hesitated. How was she to tell Hester why she did it? From the next room came the notes of Lorene’s voice, as clear as any bird’s, rising high and pure:
“Low in the grave he lay,
Jesus my Saviour.”
“It was that,” she said simply.
“What?” asked Hester; “I don’t know what you mean.”
“That that Lorene is singing. He ‘lay in the grave,’ you know, for us. That is why it is Easter. I wanted to do something for somebody, and I hadn’t any big thing.”
“It was a big thing to me,” Hester said, and went inside the back door. Celia’s face was just a trifle shadowed. Despite every effort to put it away, the thought would come: “After all, I needn’t have given it up. The baby is better, and her mother would have sent her word, and another Saturday would have done just as well; and I missed all the beauty and the fun. I know how to arrange flowers.”
The shadow staid just a little during the Sunday-school hour. The girls were eager over the delights of the day before—eager to know how she could possibly have staid away. The lovely cross made largely of her own flowers, and bearing on their green background in pure white blossoms the words, “He is risen,” was the most beautiful floral decoration in the church. “Aunt Laura made it,” Marion said. “You did not deserve to have it arranged so beautifully; we thought you ought to have had interest enough to have come and seen it, anyhow. Why didn’t you?”
“Never mind now,” said Celia; “I cannot explain, only I thought I could not go.” Her offering seemed to her small and uncalled-for; she could not talk about it. Yet, before the morning prayer in church was over, the shadow had lifted. “I did it truly for Him,” said Celia softly, to herself; “He knows I did, and whether it was of use or not, it is all right.” And when Lorene sang, in a voice like an angel’s:
“Low in the grave he lay,