SUNDAY
"FOR once in my life," said Blue Bonnet, with a long-drawn sigh, "I'm
ready for a day of rest."
"Please don't begin to rest till you've done the dishes," begged
Kitty.
Blue Bonnet tossed her head scornfully. "I wouldn't trouble trouble
till trouble troubles you, Kitty-Kat. If you can go to church with as
clear a conscience as mine, I'll take off my hat to you. One lapse
doesn't make a sinner!"
"One?" Kitty echoed, and would have continued scathingly had not Sarah
interrupted with--
"I don't see how we can go to church with such looking clothes."
"Sarah's regretting the white piqué skirt you wouldn't let her bring,"
said Kitty.
"Why, Sarah," Blue Bonnet turned a pained look on the serious young
person, "I would never have believed you would be one to stay away
from church for lack of an Easter bonnet."
"I didn't mention Easter--nor bonnets either," Sarah declared
indignantly. "The idea,--to hear you girls talk any one would think I
was completely wrapped up in clothes!"
"Everybody is, you know--except savages," returned Blue Bonnet.
Sarah's expression at this caused Mrs. Clyde to rise hurriedly and
vanish within her tent. Freed from this restraint Kitty went on
wickedly:
"Anyway, Dr. Judson has been a missionary in Africa and I'm sure he'd
excuse you if--"
Sarah left the table with great dignity, leaving the other girls weak
with laughter.
Carita appeared a little later with her denim dress looking fresh,
clean, and wrinkleless.
"It looks as if it had just been ironed," Sarah silently commented.
When Mrs. Clyde called to the girls that it was time to go over to
Camp Judson, Miss Blake was nowhere to be found.
The church service was held in the "Druid's Grove," a place of mingled
shade and sunshine, where a little tumbling creek was the only
accompaniment to the hymns, and the birds trilled an obligato. An old
tree-stump served as pulpit, and here Dr. Judson talked rather than
preached to his youthful congregation.
Blue Bonnet, listening to him, unconsciously let her eyes wander, as
they always did in the church at Woodford, in search of the memorial
window 'Sacred to the memory of Elizabeth Clyde Ashe' that was
inseparably linked in her mind with religious service. Instead of the
figure of the Good Shepherd with the lamb in his arms, the branches of
the live oaks here formed a Gothic arch, in the shadow of which sat
Mrs. Judson with little Joe asleep on her lap. The look on the
mother's face was full of the same brooding tenderness that the artist
had given to the eyes of the Shepherd of Old.
When they rose to sing, the young voices rang out clear and joyous,
quite unlike the droning that too often passes for singing in a
grown-up congregation.
"Bright youth and snow-crowned age,
Strong men and maidens meek:
Raise high your free, exulting song!
God's wondrous praises speak!
"With all the angel choirs,
With all the saints of earth,
Pour out the strains of joy and bliss,
True rapture, noblest mirth!"
The stirring verses, sung with a will by every one, seemed to soar to
the very tree-tops, making the branches sway with the rhythm and
spirit of the hymn.
Blue Bonnet heaved a sigh of regret as they rose to leave the grove.
"It's so sweet,--I wish it could last all day."
"I don't remember ever having heard you make a remark like that about
church before," remarked Kitty.
"I don't care much for anything that's held indoors," Blue Bonnet
confessed. "And I don't like preachers who make their voices sound
like the long-stop on an organ. Now that last hymn we sang makes me
fairly bubble inside."
"Don't let Sarah hear you say that. She seems to think one ought to
draw a long face on the Sabbath,--a sort of 'world-without-end'
expression, you know. I believe she thinks it almost wicked to be
happy on Sunday."
"Well, Sarah may be as blue as she likes,--this is the kind of a day
that makes me feel bright pink!"
"Where is Sarah, anyway?" asked Kitty. "I haven't seen her since
breakfast. Surely she didn't miss the service?"
"No, I saw her sitting by a big tree 'way at the back," said Amanda.
"It isn't like Sarah to take a back seat--at church," remarked Blue
Bonnet. "I believe she must be cross because we teased her this
morning."
Grandmother and Sarah were already deep in preparations for dinner
when the others straggled into camp. The well-cooked meal of muffins,
fried ham, potatoes and stewed dried fruit they served met with
visible as well as audible approval.
"Picnic lunches are more fun, but this kind of a meal is
more--filling," said Blue Bonnet. "Let's eat all we can now and have
just bread and milk for supper--we've two cans of fresh milk in the
creek."
"Blue Bonnet seems to have developed a sudden liking for 'jarring
notes,' doesn't she, girls?" asked Kitty.
When dinner was done and the dishes washed, they all sought the
buck-board seats in the lounging room.
"If we only had a book now, it would be fine to have Grandmother read
aloud," remarked Blue Bonnet.
"You wouldn't let Sarah bring any books," Amanda reminded her.
"Nevertheless, methinks Sarah looks as if she had one up her sleeve,"
said Debby.
"Not up my sleeve," Sarah confessed, "--but in my bag. I'll go get
it,--it's 'Don Quixote,' in Spanish and English both."
"Did you bring the drawn-work, too?" asked Kitty. "My, Sarah, but you
are a first-rate smuggler!"
"Now that suspicion has raised its snaky head, I'd like to know--why
is Sarah, long after the dishes are done, still wearing that apron?"
Blue Bonnet had sent a random shot, but to her surprise Sarah flushed
to the roots of her blond hair.
She rose hastily to go in search of "Don Quixote," but the other girls
were too quick for her. They pitilessly tore the shielding apron from
her shoulders, and the newly sponged and pressed middy jacket and
khaki skirt stood revealed in all their guilty freshness.
"They've been ironed!" gasped Kitty.
"What do you think of that for selfishness,--not to let a soul know
she had an iron?" demanded Debby.
"I got it over at Mrs. Judson's. And none of you said you wanted an
iron," said Sarah.
"And do you mean to say that our Sarah, daughter of the Reverend
Samuel Blake, wilfully broke the Sabbath by ironing?" Concentrated
horror appeared on Kitty's saucy countenance.
"She probably thinks 'the better the day the better the deed,'" said
Blue Bonnet.
"If Mrs. Judson could press Carita's dress, I don't see that it was
any worse for me to press mine," Sarah protested. "I'm used to looking
respectable at church."
"It's no wonder you refused to sit by so unrespectable a crowd as the
rest of us!" exclaimed Blue Bonnet.
Mrs. Clyde was laughing inwardly, but she came to the aid of the
unhappy Sarah.
"I think good nature has ceased to be a virtue, Sarah," she declared.
"Hereafter you have my permission to resort to violence if necessary
to protect yourself. Quiet down, girls,--remember it is Sunday."
Much relieved, Sarah brought forth the contraband book and the long
peaceful afternoon was spent in listening to the various mishaps that
befell the valiant Don and his faithful Sancho Panza.
"If it weren't for setting a dangerous precedent, I'd tell Sarah how
glad we all are that she defied the authorities and did some
smuggling," remarked Kitty. She and Debby had gone to the creek to
bring up the milk for supper, and now made a pretty picture as they
came up the willow-grown path, bearing the tall cans.
"You look like somebody-or-other at the well," Blue Bonnet declared as
Kitty came into sight.
"Are you sure you don't mean thing-a-ma-bob?" laughed Kitty. "If you
mean Rebecca, I don't agree with you. I'll wager Rebecca never wore a
middy blouse or carried a tin milk-can!"
That evening the inmates of both camps again sat about a big bonfire.
But this time the frolics and rollicking airs had given way to a
decorous singing of patriotic songs, stirring hymns and a pleasant
"sermonette" by the pastor of this youthful flock.
Long after this Sunday was past, Blue Bonnet remembered it as one of
the sweetest Sabbaths she had ever spent; and she could never decide
just what part of the day she had liked most,--the hour in the Druid's
Grove; the afternoon when Grandmother with her pleasant voice had read
aloud from "Don Quixote;" or the evening, when they sat about the
glowing logs, alternately singing, and listening to Dr. Judson.
"I'm going to ask Sandy to recite," Knight whispered to her as there
fell a silence.
"Get him to do 'The Bridge!'" Blue Bonnet said with dancing eyes.
"I'm sure he'd rather do 'We are Seven,'" he replied, laughing.
"I wish he'd recite the 'Hymn of the Alamo,'" said Alec, who had
overheard the conversation. "Ask him to, Knight,--he'll do anything
for you, and that's a fine poem."
"Alec wrote an essay on the Alamo," Blue Bonnet explained to Knight,
"and it won a prize--the Sargent prize--in our school this year."
Alec squirmed with a boyish dislike of hearing himself praised; but
Knight slapped him on the shoulder enthusiastically.
"Bully for you, old chap! Tell the fellows the story of the Alamo,
will you? Uncle Bayard likes them to hear historical things like
that--can't hear them too often."
Alec looked horrified at the idea, but Blue Bonnet joined Knight in
urging him. "You tell the story of the fight and maybe Sandy will
finish with the Hymn."
Sandy promising to do his part, Alec finally yielded. Sinking far back
in the shadow where his face could not be seen by any of the great
circle of listeners, and his voice came out of the blackness with a
decided tremor in it, the boy told, and told well, the story of the
frontier riflemen in their struggle for the liberation of Texas from
the yoke of the Mexican dictator.
How the Texas lads thrilled at the recital of heroism, and thrilled at
the mention of such names as Travis and Crockett! It was not a new
tale; not a boy there but knew the story of that handful of men--less
than two hundred of them--who, barricading themselves within the Alamo
fortress, for ten days defied the Mexicans, over four thousand strong;
only to be massacred to a man in the final heartrending fall.
Alec's voice lost its tremor and ended with a patriotic ring that made
Blue Bonnet glow with pride--pride in the heroes he told of, and in
the friend who told of them.
"It just needs Colonel Potter's poem to add the right climax to that
bit of history," Dr. Judson declared; and Sandy stood up at once.
Sandy was used to "talking on his feet;" and he stood in an easy
posture, tossing his light reddish hair back from his broad forehead,
and with one hand resting lightly on the alpenstock he had been
carving for Blue Bonnet.
Listening to him, Blue Bonnet lost all her early prejudice against the
clever lad, and responding to the unbounded enthusiasm and the true
orator's ring in the boyish voice, thrilled warmly to the spirit of
the lines:
HYMN OF THE ALAMO
"Arise! Man the wall--our clarion blast
Now sounds its final reveille,--
This dawning morn must be the last
Our fated band shall ever see.
To life, but not to hope, farewell;
Yon trumpet's clang and cannon's peal,
And storming shout and clash of steel
Is _ours_,--but not our country's knell.
Welcome the Spartan's death!
'Tis no despairing strife--
We fall, we die--but our expiring breath
Is freedom's breath of life!
"Here, on this new Thermopylae,
Our monument shall tower on high,
And 'Alamo' hereafter be
On bloodier fields the battle-cry!"
Thus Travis from the rampart cried;
And when his warriors saw the foe
Like whelming billows surge below,--
At once each dauntless heart replied:
"Welcome the Spartan's death!
'Tis no despairing strife--
We fall--but our expiring breath
Is freedom's breath of life!"
As Sandy resumed his seat amid a hush that was a greater tribute than
applause, Blue Bonnet turned to Knight with glowing eyes.
"And to think those brave fellows did all that for Texas! Aren't you
proud to belong to this state?"
"You'd better believe I am!"
"We've had some heroes in Massachusetts," Alec reminded them.
"And they were all _Americans_--and so are we." Knight's bigger way of
looking at the matter settled what threatened to grow into an
argument.
"That Sandy boy's a wonder," Blue Bonnet exclaimed. "I take back every
uncomplimentary remark I ever made about him. Appearances are so
deceiving."
"'All that glitters isn't gold,'" said Knight, looking like his uncle
as he gravely quoted this ancient maxim.
"It's a pity it isn't,--Sandy would be a millionaire with that hair of
his!" Blue Bonnet laughed.
"I mean 'handsome is as handsome does,'" said Knight, "--that isn't
quite so dangerous a quotation. I expect to see Sandy President some
day, or at least a senator."
"Can't you imagine the newspaper headings: 'Senator Red-top of
Texas'--?" laughed Blue Bonnet.
"He's hoping to go East to college this fall," Knight remarked more
seriously.
"It's queer," said Alec, "how all the Western boys long to go East and
all the Eastern fellows think they're just made if they can come
West. I'd like to trade him my chance at Harvard for his health and
strength."
"Can't you arrange that trifling exchange for Alec?" Blue Bonnet asked
Knight.
He shook his head. "Sandy won't take anybody's chances,--he's the sort
that makes his own."
"Some of us aren't allowed to."
Alec's voice had suddenly grown moody, and Blue Bonnet thought it time
to change the subject. In a moment her clear, sweet voice was leading
the rest in "The Flag without a Stain."
"How do you like a Texas Sunday?" Blue Bonnet found herself beside
Sarah as they walked back to _Poco Tiempo_, and put the question
rather mischievously.
"It's been very nice, most of it," Sarah returned in a stiff manner,
very unlike her usual one.
"What part didn't you like?"
Sarah made sure that the others were not listening, then answered in a
tone Blue Bonnet had never heard from her before:
"I didn't like being made to feel that whatever I do is the wrong
thing. I never seem to please you any more, Blue Bonnet."
"Why, Sarah!" Blue Bonnet stopped still and gazed at Sarah in
consternation. Sarah paused, too, and in the faint rays from the fire
the two girls looked at each other steadily for a moment without
speaking. Finally Blue Bonnet blurted out:
"I wish you'd tell me just what you mean."
"I mean that I've come to the conclusion that I should have stayed in
Woodford. I don't seem to fit in here." Sarah's voice shook a little.
"Sarah!" was still all Blue Bonnet could stammer. It was all so sudden
and unexpected; a bolt from a clear sky.
"Please don't think I'm thin-skinned and can't stand a little
teasing," Sarah continued, "for I'm sure I can--I always have had to.
But lately I haven't said a thing that hasn't made one or other of you
'hoot' as Kitty says. And everything I've wanted to do you've thought
ridiculous. Lately the boys have begun to laugh at me; even those I
hardly know."
This time Blue Bonnet said nothing; she was overcome by the thought
that all Sarah had said was quite true. She hastily reviewed the past
few weeks, and as one by one she remembered various incidents, the
force of Sarah's complaints struck her anew.
Kitty's dare and that wild ride; the ban put upon Sarah's Spanish
books and the much-loved drawn-work; and, lately, the almost concerted
effort of all of them to convert everything Sarah said and did into
something unwarranted and absurd. By the time Blue Bonnet had reached
her own action of that very morning in tearing the apron forcibly
from Sarah's shoulders, she was dumb with shame. This was the way she
had rewarded her friend for a loyalty that had been unswerving through
all that dreadful week in Woodford, when the other girls had sent her
to Coventry; for all her sweet thoughtfulness that had proved itself
unfailing!
She suddenly threw her arms impulsively around Sarah's shoulders and
faced her squarely.
"I've been downright horrid," she said earnestly. "And a rude, selfish
hostess. I haven't any right to expect you to forgive me, Sarah, dear,
but if you can find it in your heart to give another chance, I'll show
you I can and will be different."
"It isn't serious enough to talk of forgiveness," Sarah said in her
honest, straightforward way. "All I want to know is, that you're
not--sorry--I came."
"Sarah, don't say that! You make me hate myself!" Blue Bonnet shook
her almost fiercely. "You mustn't think it either. I'm glad, glad,
glad you came! I've meant you to know it, and I've wanted you to have
a splendid time, and here all the while--" she stopped and swallowed
hard.
Sarah's face lighted up happily and she did what was for her an
unprecedented thing,--she drew Blue Bonnet to her and gave her a
hearty hug.
"That's all I wanted to know," she said. "Please don't imagine I
haven't enjoyed myself, Blue Bonnet. It's been the most wonderful
visit! I'm queer, I know, but I can't help liking the things I like,
and if only the girls would stop trying to make me over--"
"I'll make them!" Blue Bonnet declared; and at this threat they both
laughed, and the storm was over.