Before they seated themselves, Aunt Betty stood at the back of her chair, and, leaning on its upper round with her eyes fixed on the pork, she said,--

"For all our vittles and other marcies we thank Thee."

Marion, when she became aware of what was taking place, bowed her head reverently; but when she raised it she could not conceal the smile that played around her mouth.

She did not know this was the same grace which had been said over that table for one hundred and twenty years; yet it made her feel more at home, and she began to chat with her quaint old relative in her pleasant way, telling her of her home, of their daily life there, of the good her father was doing, and how every one loved and respected him.

Aunt Betty listened in silence, only now and then uttering a grunt, which, whether it was commendatory or condemnatory, Marion could not tell. It was a long, dull evening that followed. At eight, one of the tallow candles, much to her joy, lighted Marion to her bed.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE ACADEMY GIRL'S THANKSGIVING AT THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

Marion never knew that shortly after she fell asleep a tall, gaunt woman with a gray-and-white blanket over her shoulders stole softly into her room, holding her candle high above her bed, and standing over, peered down at her.

As she gazed, a half-smile crept into her rugged face. "Pretty creatur!" she said aloud; then, with deft and careful fingers she tucked the bed-clothes close around the sleeping girl, smiled broadly, and crept out.

The next morning when Marion waked, through the odd little oriel window the late winter light was struggling fitfully in. At first she could not tell where she was: the rafters over her head, the bare white walls that surrounded her, the blue-and-white homespun quilt that covered her, were unlike any thing she had ever seen before.

She was on her feet in a moment, half frightened at the dim light. Had another night come? Had she slept over Thanksgiving?

When she went to the kitchen, Aunt Betty was there busy over the cooking-stove. She was about making an apology for her lateness, but she was interrupted by,--

"'Taint never too late to pray; you may read the Bible." She pointed without another word to the old family Bible. Marion took it, opened it slowly, waiting to be told where to read.

"Thanksgiving," said Aunt Betty briefly.

"It's all Thanksgiving my father says. He thinks the Bible was given us to make us happy."

"Thirty-fourth Psalm, then," and a quiet look came into the old seamed face.

When Marion had read it, her aunt rose from her chair, stepped behind it, tilted it on its front legs, and folding her hands on its top began to pray.

Like the grace at table, it was the same old prayer that had gone up from that same old kitchen for one hundred and twenty years. Its quaint simplicity was a marvel to the young girl who listened, but a breath of its devotion reached and touched her heart.

Then followed breakfast. Marion wondered, as they two sat at the table alone, how the old aunt could have borne the loneliness for so many long years.

To her, on her first Thanksgiving away from her cheerful home, there was something positively uncanny in the silence which settled down over the house; even the old yellow dog, with his nose between his front paws, slept soundly, and the great red rooster that had lighted upon the forked stick that before the back door had held the farm milk-pails for more than a century, instead of calling for his Thanksgiving breakfast, as orthodox New England roosters are expected to do, just flapped his wings lazily, and turned a much becombed head imploringly toward the kitchen window.

What was to be done with the long, dull festival day? Marion may be forgiven if she cast many longing thoughts back to the academy, to the pleasant bustle that filled the long corridors, the merry laughs of the girls, the endless chatter, the coming and the going that seemed to her never to cease. She was homesick to see Miss Ashton, her room-mates, and Helen, over whose daily life she had already installed herself as responsible for its comforts and its pleasures, and who, homeless and poor, remained almost by herself in the great empty building.

She was not, however, left long in doubt as to the day's occupations.

Hardly had the breakfast dishes been put away, when Aunt Betty said,--

"Meetin' begins at ten. We hain't got no bell, and we'll start in season. You can put on your things."

The clock said nine; meeting began at ten. Five minutes were all she needed for preparation. Here was time for a few lines at least of that Greek tragedy. She had read one line, when the door opened, and there stood Aunt Betty.

"Listen, Aunt Betty!" she said. "Hear how soft these words are." Then she rattled off line after line of the chorus. This is Greek, she said, pausing to take breath. "Listen! I will translate for you."

She carried her book to the oriel window, so the light would fall more clearly on its page, and began,--

"Before the mirror's golden round, Curious my braided hair I bound, Adjusted for the night; And now, disrobed, for rest prepared, Sudden tumultuous cries are heard, And shrieks of wild affright.

Grecians to Grecians shouting call, 'Now let the haughty city fall; In dust her towers, her rampiers lay, And bear triumphant her rich spoils away.'"

"Doesn't that roll along sublimely? Can't you hear the cries and the shouts of the Grecian host?"

"I can hear Marion Parke making a fool of herself. Be you, or be you not, goin' to meetin' with me?"

"Meeting? Why, of course I am. I wouldn't miss it for anything. I'll be ready in half a minute. Will you?"

Aunt Betty, in her short black skirt, her old gray sack, and her heavy shoes, did not make much of a holiday appearance. Something of this crept slowly into her brain as she looked down, so she turned quickly, and went away without another word.

Marion gave some girl-like twists to her brown hair, pinned a gay scarlet bow to the neck of her sack, and, looking fresh and pretty as a rosebud, went to the kitchen, where she had to wait some time before Aunt Betty made her appearance.

Cousin Abijah had brought the old horse and sleigh round to the back door. Here a long slanting roof ran down to the lintel of the door, and up to the plain cornice snow-drifts lay piled. What a winter scene it was! Marion, never having seen the like before, gazed at it in wondering admiration.

When Aunt Betty and Marion started for the village meeting-house, the thermometer was fifteen degrees below zero.

Aunt Betty took a rein in each hand, and as soon as the snow-banks bordering the narrow path to the road were safely pa.s.sed, began a series of jerks at the horse's mouth, which Dan perfectly well understood, too well, indeed, to allow himself to be hurried in the least.

"One foot up, and one foot down, That's the way to Lunnon town,"

laughed Marion when they had gone a few rods.

"Klick! Klick!" with more decisive tugs from Dan's mistress; but the "Klicks," as well as the tugs, were of no avail, and Marion, afraid to venture another comment, turned her eyes from the horse to the scenery around her.

Notwithstanding the extreme cold, the ride to the little meeting-house Marion will never forget. When she left the farmhouse it seemed to her a short walk would bring her to the foot of the snow-clad mountains; but, to her surprise, when they reached the church they were towering up above the small village like huge sentinels, so still, so grand, that, hardly conscious she was speaking aloud, Marion said,--

"I never knew before what it meant in the Bible where it says, 'The strength of the hills is his also.' Wonderful! wonderful!"

"Eh?" asked Aunt Betty, only a dim comprehension of what Marion meant having crept in beneath the big red hood that covered her head.

Marion repeated the verse, and to her surprise her aunt answered it with, "'Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying grace! grace unto it.'" Not a word did she offer in explanation; she only twitched the horse's head more emphatically, and did not speak again until she reached the meeting-house door.

What a desolate-looking audience-room it was! Up in one corner roared a big iron stove, which, do its best, failed to warm but a few feet of the s.p.a.ces around it. A gray-bearded minister in his overcoat was reading from the pulpit a hymn, as they went in, and a dozen people, most of them men, were scattered round in the bare pews.

They all looked pleased to see an addition to their number, and some nodded to Aunt Betty; all stared at the new-comer.

There was no sermon, but a short address, which Marion strove to remember, that she might repeat it to her father, as having come from the old pulpit before which he had worshipped as a boy; but, do her best to be attentive and decorous, her teeth chattered, and the "Amen"

was to her the most interesting part of the services.

The ride home was even colder than the one to the meeting; for a brisk north-east wind had risen, and came howling down from the mountains in strong, long gusts that betokened a coming storm.