Missy | Page 5

church service. But her mother didn't allow her to do that. Mother insisted that church service and Sunday-school, combined, were too much for a little girl, and would give her headaches.
So there was nothing for Missy to do but go home. The sun shone just as brightly as on her hither journey but now she had no impulse to skip. She walked along sedately, in rhythm to inner, long-drawn cadences. The cadences permeated her--were herself. She was sad, yet pleasantly, thrillingly so. It was divine. When she reached home, she went into the empty front-parlour and hunted out the big, cloth- covered hymnal that was there. She found "Asleep in Jesus" and played it over and over on the piano. The bass was a trifle difficult, but that didn't matter. Then she found other hymns which were in accord with her mood: "Abide with Me"; "Nearer My God to Thee"; "One Sweetly Solemn Thought." The last was sublimely beautiful; it almost stole her favour away from "Asleep in Jesus." Not quite, though.
She was re-playing her first favourite when the folks all came in from church. There were father and mother, grandpa and grandma Merriam who lived in the south part of town, Aunt Nettie, and Cousin Pete Merriam. Cousin Pete's mother was dead and his father out in California on a long business trip, so he was spending that summer in Cherryvale with his grandparents.
Melissa admired Cousin Pete very much, for he was big and handsome and wore more stylish-looking clothes than did most of the young men in Cherryvale. Also, he was very old--nineteen, and a sophomore at the State University. Very old. Naturally he was much wiser than Missy, for all her acquired wisdom. She stood in awe of him. He had a way of asking her absurd, foolish questions about things that everybody knew; and when, to be polite, she had to answer him seriously in his own foolish vein, he would laugh at her! So, though she admired him, she always had an impulse to run away from him. She would have liked, now, in this heavenly, religious mood, to run away lest he might ask her embarrassing questions about it. But, before she had the chance, grandpa said:
"Why Missy, playing hymns? You'll be church organist before we know it!"
Missy blushed.
"'Asleep in Jesus' is my favourite, I think," commented grandma. "It's the one I'd like sung over me at the last. Play it again, dear."
But Pete had picked up a sheet of music from the top of the piano.
"Let's have this, Missy." He turned to his grandmother. "Ought to hear her do this rag--I've been teaching her double-bass."
Missy shrank back as he placed the rag-time on the music-rest.
"Oh, I'd rather not--to-day."
Pete smiled down at her--his amiable but condescending smile.
"What's the matter with to-day?" he asked.
Missy blushed again.
"Oh, I don't know--I just don't feel that way, I guess."
"Don't feel that way?" repeated Pete. "You're temperamental, are you? How do you feel, Missy?"
Missy feared she was letting herself in for embarrassment; but this was a holy subject. So she made herself answer:
"I guess I feel religious."
Pete shouted. "She feels religious! That's a good one! She guesses she--"
"Peter, you should be ashamed of yourself!" reproved his grandmother.
"She's a scream!" he insisted. "Religious! That kid!"
"Well," defended Missy, timid and puzzled, but wounded to unwonted bravery, "isn't it proper to feel like that on the Sabbath?"
Pete shouted again.
"Peter--stop that! You should be ashamed of yourself!" It was his grandfather this time. Grandpa moved over to the piano and removed the rag-time from off the hymnal, pausing to pat Missy on the head.
But Peter was not the age to be easily squelched.
"What does it feel like, Missy--the religious feeling?"
Missy, her eyes bright behind their blur, didn't answer. Indeed, she could not have defined that sweetly sad glow, now so cruelly crushed, even had she wanted to.
Missy didn't enjoy her dinner as much as she usually did the midday Sunday feasts when grandpa and grandma came to eat with them. She felt embarrassed and shy. Of course she had to answer when asked why she wasn't eating her drumstick, and whether the green apples in grandma's orchard had given her an "upset," and other direct questions; but when she could, she kept silent. She was glad Pete didn't talk to her much. Yet, now and then, she caught his eyes upon her in a look of sardonic enquiry, and quickly averted her own.
Her unhappiness lasted till the visitors had departed. Then, after aimlessly wandering about, she took her Holy Bible out to the summerhouse. She was contemplating a surprise for grandpa and grandma. Next week mother and Aunt Nettie were going over to Aunt Anna's in Junction City for a few days; during their absence Missy was to stay with her grandparents. And