“Looks like a bug thief.”  This from Beth.

“Burglar, child,” said Nan.

“Bug thief is what I meant,” said Beth with dignity, for she didn’t propose to be corrected by Nan or sister.  Then she walked over to her mother.  “Are you very old, mother?” she asked.  “I’ve been meaning to ask.  Are you a hundred, or eleven, or is that your size shoe?”

“Elizabeth Rayburn!” said Ethelwyn, dropping the photographs and coming over to her mother, followed by Nan.  “Our mother isn’t old at all!”

“No I know she isn’t, only she must be toler’bly old, to know so much goodness.”

“I’m just old enough to love you,” said their mother, laughing and hugging them all three at once in a way she had.

“I’ve some money in the bank,” said Nan presently.  “I’ve been thinking what I’d buy for the Rest, and I’ve ’bout decided on a feeble chair.”

“Goodness me!  I shall never sit in it, if it’s feeble, Nan,” said Aunty Stevens, laughing.

“No, for the feeble,” corrected Nan.  “I want my mother to give something too; she has some money, and I believe if she would give it for my brother’s sake, she would feel better and wouldn’t cry so much.  Perhaps she will.”

“We are all going to church to-morrow, ’cause your father is going to preach about the Rest,—­pray over it too, and mother’s going to sing the offertory, two verses, if the sermon’s too long, and three if it isn’t.  You tell your father that, for singing is much more interesting than preaching any day.”

“Ethelwyn!”

“Why it is, mother.”

“I’ll tell father, but he is likely to go on a long time when he is once started,” said Nan.

“If I don’t go to sleep, I’ll be sure to wiggle,” said Beth.

But they all went to sleep.

Ethelwyn sat in the choir seats close to her mother; while Elizabeth sat below with Aunty Stevens.  Nan sat quite near them and sweetly smiled at Elizabeth.

“How do you feel?” she asked in a shrill whisper.  “Wiggly?  I told father not to preach very long, but there is no telling.  Mother has some gum drops for me if I wiggle.”

“Don’t you think you will then?” asked Beth.

But Nan’s mother stopped further disclosures by turning her daughter around, and setting her down with emphasis on the other side of her.

Fortunately they all three fell asleep in the early part of the sermon and did not wake up until Mrs. Rayburn began to sing.  At the first note Ethelwyn slipped down, and stood with her hand in her mother’s.  Then Elizabeth eluded Aunty Stevens’s vigilant eye, slipped out of the seat and walked up and stood on the other side, her head raised looking into her mother’s face, and to their great delight the three verses were sung.

CHAPTER IX Once a Year

      Birth days,
      Earth days,
    Seem very few;
      Year days,
      Dear days,
    When life is new.