Missy | Page 8

accompaniment of her tongue, she kept her hands busied, whether "puttering about" in her house or flower-garden, or crocheting "tidies," or knitting little mittens, or creating the multi-coloured paper-flowers which helped make her house so alluring.
That night for supper they had beefsteak and hot biscuits and custard pie; and grandma let her eat these delicacies which were forbidden at home. She even let her drink coffee! Not that Missy cared especially for coffee--it had a bitter taste; but drinking it made her feel grown-up. She always felt more grown-up at grandma's than at home. She was "company," and they showed her a consideration one never receives at home.
After supper Cousin Pete went out somewhere, and the other three had a long, pleasant evening. Another agreeable feature about staying at grandma's was that they didn't make such a point of her going to bed early. The three of them sat out on the porch till the night came stealing up; it covered the street and the yard with darkness, crawled into the tree tops and the rose-bushes and the lilac-hedge. It hid all the familiar objects of daytime, except the street-lamp at the corner and certain windows of the neighbours' houses, which now showed square and yellow. Of the people on the porch next door, and of those passing in the street, only the voices remained; and, sometimes, a glowing point of red which was a cigar.
Presently the moon crept up from behind the Jones's house, peeping stealthily, as if to make sure that all was right in Cherryvale. And then everything became visible again, but in a magically beautiful way; it was now like a picture from a fairy-tale. Indeed, this was the hour when your belief in fairies was most apt to return to you.
The locusts began to sing. They sang loudly. And grandma kept up her chatter. But within Missy everything seemed to become very quiet. Suddenly she felt sad, a peculiar, serene kind of sadness. It grew from the inside out--now and then almost escaping in a sigh. Because it couldn't quite escape, it hurt; she envied the locusts who were letting their sadness escape in that reiterant, tranquil song.
She was glad when, at last, grandpa said:
"How'd you like to go in and play me a tune, Missy?"
"Oh, I'd love to, grandpa!" Missy jumped up eagerly.
So grandpa lighted the parlour lamp, whose crystal bangles now looked like enormous diamonds; and a delicious time commenced. Grandpa got out his cloth-covered hymnal, and she played again those hymns which mingle so inexplicably with the feelings inside you. Not even her difficulties with the organ--such as forgetting occasionally to treadle, or having the keys pop up soundlessly from under her fingers--could mar that feeling. Especially when grandpa added his bass to the music, a deep bass so impressive as to make it improper to question its harmony, even in your own mind.
Grandma had come in and seated herself in her little willow rocker; she was rocking in time to the music, her eyes closed, and saying nothing--just listening to the two of them. And, playing those hymns, with grandpa singing and grandma listening, the new religious feeling grew and grew and grew in Missy till it seemed to flow out of her and fill the room. It flowed on out and filled the yard, the town, the world; and upward, upward, upward--she was one with the sky and moon and stars. . .
At last, in a little lull, grandpa said:
"Now, Missy, my song--you know."
Missy knew very well what grandpa's favourite was; it was one of the first pieces she had learned by heart. So she played for him "Silver Threads among the Gold."
"Thanks, baby," said grandpa when she had finished. There was a suspicious brightness in his eyes. And a suspicious brightness in grandma's, too. So, though she wasn't unhappy at all, she felt her own eyes grow moist. Grandpa and grandma weren't really unhappy, either. Why, when people are not really unhappy at all, do their eyes fill just of themselves?
And now was the moment of the great surprise at hand. Missy could scarcely wait. It must be admitted that, during the interminable time that grandpa was reading his chapter--it was even a longer chapter than usual to-night--and while grandma was reading her shorter one, Missy was not attending. She was repeating to herself the Twenty-third Psalm. And even when they all knelt, grandpa beside the big Morris chair and grandma beside the little willow rocker and Missy beside the "patent rocker" with the prettiest crocheted tidy-- her thoughts were still in a divine channel exclusively her own.
But now, at last, came the time for that channel to be widened; she closed her eyes tighter, clasped her hands together, and began:
"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,