CHAPTER XXV.  A CUP OF FAILURE

One warm Sunday evening in the moon of golden-rod, we all, grown-ups and children, were sitting in the orchard by the Pulpit Stone singing sweet old gospel hymns.  We could all sing more or less, except poor Sara Ray, who had once despairingly confided to me that she didn’t know what she’d ever do when she went to heaven, because she couldn’t sing a note.

That whole scene comes out clearly for me in memory—­the arc of primrose sky over the trees behind the old house, the fruit-laden boughs of the orchard, the bank of golden-rod, like a wave of sunshine, behind the Pulpit Stone, the nameless colour seen on a fir wood in a ruddy sunset.  I can see Uncle Alec’s tired, brilliant, blue eyes, Aunt Janet’s wholesome, matronly face, Uncle Roger’s sweeping blond beard and red cheeks, and Aunt Olivia’s full-blown beauty.  Two voices ring out for me above all others in the music that echoes through the halls of recollection.  Cecily’s sweet and silvery, and Uncle Alec’s fine tenor.  “If you’re a King, you sing,” was a Carlisle proverb in those days.  Aunt Julia had been the flower of the flock in that respect and had become a noted concert singer.  The world had never heard of the rest.  Their music echoed only along the hidden ways of life, and served but to lighten the cares of the trivial round and common task.

That evening, after they tired of singing, our grown-ups began talking of their youthful days and doings.

This was always a keen delight to us small fry.  We listened avidly to the tales of our uncles and aunts in the days when they, too—­hard fact to realize—­had been children.  Good and proper as they were now, once, so it seemed, they had gotten into mischief and even had their quarrels and disagreements.  On this particular evening Uncle Roger told many stories of Uncle Edward, and one in which the said Edward had preached sermons at the mature age of ten from the Pulpit Stone fired, as the sequel will show, the Story Girl’s imagination.

“Can’t I just see him at it now,” said Uncle Roger, “leaning over that old boulder, his cheeks red and his eyes burning with excitement, banging the top of it as he had seen the ministers do in church.  It wasn’t cushioned, however, and he always bruised his hands in his self-forgetful earnestness.  We thought him a regular wonder.  We loved to hear him preach, but we didn’t like to hear him pray, because he always insisted on praying for each of us by name, and it made us feel wretchedly uncomfortable, somehow.  Alec, do you remember how furious Julia was because Edward prayed one day that she might be preserved from vanity and conceit over her singing?”