“Why, of course!” choked Mother, smiling.  “I’m just afraid, Seth, that I’m getting set on her coming, and that isn’t right at all, you know, because she mightn’t be coming.”

“Well, and then again she might.  Howsomenever, we’ll have this room fixed up company fine, and if she don’t come we’ll just come here and camp for a week, you and me, and pretend we’re out visiting.  How would that do?  Say, it’s real pretty here, like spring in the orchard, ain’t it, Mother?  Well, now, you figure out what you’re going to have for bureau fixings, and I’ll get back to my tacking.  I want to get done to-night and get that pretty white furniture moved in.  You’re sure the enamel is perfectly dry on that bed?  That was the last piece he worked on.  I think Jed made a pretty good job of it, for such quick work.  Don’t you?  Got a clean counterpane, and one of your pink-and-white patchwork quilts for in here, haven’t you, and a posy pin-cushion?  My! but I’d like to know what she says when she sees it first!”

And so the two old dears jollied each other along till far past their bedtime; and when at last they lay quiet for the night Mother raised up in the moonlight that was flooding her side of the room and looked cautiously over to the other side of the bed: 

“Father!  You awake yet?”

“Yes!” sleepily.

“What’ll we do about going to church to-morrow?  The telegram might come while we’re gone, and then we’d never know what she answered.”

“Oh, they’d call up again until they got us.  And, anyhow, we’d call them up when we got back and ask if any message had come yet?”

“Oh!  Would we?” and Mother Marshall lay down with a sigh of relief, marveling, as she often had, at the superior knowledge in little technical details that men so often displayed.  Of course in the real vital things of life women had to be on hand to make things move smoothly, but just a little thing like that, now, that needed a bit of what seemed almost superfluous information, a man always knew; and you wondered how he knew, because nobody ever seemed to have taught him!  So at last Mother Marshall slept.

Anxious inquiry of the telephone after church brought forth no telegram.  Dinner was a strained and artificial affair, preceded by a wistful but submissive blessing on the meal.  Then the couple settled down in their comfortable chairs, one each side of the telephone, and tried to read, but somehow the hours dragged slowly.

“There’s that pair of Grandmother Marshall’s andirons up in the attic!” said Mother Marshall, looking up suddenly over the top of the Sunday school Times.

“I’ll bring them down the first thing in the morning!” said Father, with his finger on a promise in the Psalms.  Then there was silence for some time.

Mother Marshall’s eyes suddenly lighted on an article headed, “My Class of Boys.”

“Seth!” she said, with a beautiful light in her eyes.  “You don’t suppose maybe she’d be willing to take Stephen’s class of boys in Sunday-school when she gets better?  I can’t bear to see them begin to stay away, and Deacon Grigsby admits he don’t know how to manage them.”