the choir, or somebody in it,
sings of their own accord, without the preacher givin' it out; just
like your tomatoes come up in the spring, voluntary, without you
plantin' the seed. That's the way they do in the city churches,' says
she, 'and we are goin' to put on city style Sunday.'

"Then they went to work and practised some new tunes for the hymns
Parson Page had give 'em, so if Uncle Jim's rheumatism didn't hold
out, he'd still have to hold his peace.

"Well, Sunday come; but special providence was on Uncle Jim's side
that time, and there he was as smilin' as a basket o' chips if he did
have to walk with a cane. We'd had the church cleaned up as neat as a
new pin. My Jane had put a bunch of honeysuckles and pinks on the
organ, and everybody was dressed in their best. Miss Penelope was
settin' at the organ with a bunch of roses in her hand, and the
windows was all open, and you could see the trees wavin' in the wind
and hear the birds singin' outside. I always did think that was the
best part o' Sunday--that time jest before church begins."

Aunt Jane's voice dropped. Her words came slowly; and into the story
fell one of those "flashes of silence" to which she was as little
given as the great historian. The pan of dumplings waited for the
sprinkling of spice and sugar, while she stood motionless, looking
afar off, though her gaze apparently stopped on the vacant whitewashed
wall before her. No mind reader's art was needed to tell what scene
her faded eyes beheld. There was the old church, with its battered
furniture and high pulpit. For one brief moment the grave had yielded
up its dead, and "the old familiar faces" looked out from every pew.
We were very near together, Aunt Jane and I; but the breeze that
fanned her brow was not the breeze I felt as I sat by her kitchen
window. For her a wind was blowing across the plains of memory; and
the honeysuckle odor it carried was not from the bush in the yard. It
came, weighted with dreams, from the blossoms that her Jane had placed
on the organ twenty-five years ago. A bob-white was calling in the
meadow across the dusty road, and the echoes of the second bell had
just died away. She and Abram were side by side in their accustomed
place, and life lay like a watered garden in the peaceful stillness of
the time "jest before church begins."

The asparagus on the stove boiled over with a great spluttering, and
Aunt Jane came back to "the eternal now."

"Sakes alive!" sh