“Now isn’t that just wonderful!” said Mother, sitting back weakly behind the coffee-pot and wiping away an excited tear with the corner of her apron.  “To think that can be done!  Now, wouldn’t it be just beautiful if we had telephones to heaven!  Think, if we could get word from Stephen to-day, how happy we’d be!”

“Why, we have!” said Father.  “Wait!” and he reached over to the little stand by the window and grasped the worn old Bible.  “Here!  Listen to this!

“For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.  For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:  and the dead in Christ shall rise first:  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air:  and so shall we ever be with the Lord.  Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

“There, Mother!  Ain’t that just as good as any telegram from a moving train?  And it’s signed with His own seal and signature!  It means He’s heard our sorrow about Stephen’s leaving us, and He heard it ages before we felt it ourselves, and wrote this down for us!  Sent us a telegram this morning, just to comfort us!  I reckon that meeting with Stephen and the Lord in the air is going to knock the spots clean out of this little old meeting to-morrow morning down at Sloan’s Station.  We won’t need our ottymobeel any more after that.  We’ll have wings, Mother!  How’ll you like to fly?”

Mother gave a little gasp of joy and smiled at Father like a rainbow through her tears.  “That’s so, Father!  We don’t need telephones to heaven, do we?  I guess His words cover all our needs if we’d only remember to look for them.  Now, Father, I must get at those doughnuts!  Was you going to take the machine and run down to town and see if those books have come yet?  They surely ought to be here by this time.  Then don’t forget to fix that fire up in the bedroom so it’ll be all ready to light when she gets here.  Isn’t it funny, Father, we don’t know how she looks!  Not in the least.  And if two girls should get off the train at Sloan’s Station we wouldn’t know which was the right one!”

“Well I should!” declared Father.  “I’m dead certain there ain’t two girls in the whole universe could have written that letter, and if you’d put any other one down with her, and I saw them side by side, I could tell first off which she was!”

So they helped each other through that last exciting day, finding something to do up to the very last minute the next morning before it was time to start to Sloan’s Station to meet the train.

Mother would go along, of course.  She pictured herself standing for hours beside that kitchen window with her cheek against the old hat, waiting, and wondering what had happened that they hadn’t come, and she couldn’t see it that way.  So she left the dinner in such stages of getting ready that it could be soon brought to completion, and wrapped herself in her big gray cloak.