Missy Part 5

To Missy's delight Polly sang a solo. It was "One Sweetly Solemn Thought"--oh, rapture! Polly's high soprano floated up clear and piercing-sweet. It was so beautiful that it hurt. Missy shut her eyes.

She could almost see angels in misty white and floating golden hair.

Something quivered inside her; once more on the wings of music was the religious feeling stealing back to her.

The solo was finished, but Missy kept her eyes closed whenever she thought no one was looking. She was anxious to hold the religious feeling till her soul could be entirely born anew. And she had quite a long time to wait. That made her task difficult and complicated; for it's not easy at the same time to retain an emotional state and to rehea.r.s.e a piece you're afraid of forgetting.

But the service gradually wore through. Now they were at the "come forward and sit at the feet of Jesus." To-night grandpa and grandma didn't do that; they merely knelt in the pew with bowed heads. So Missy also knelt with bowed head. She was by this time in a state difficult to describe; a quivering jumble of excitement, eagerness, timidity, fear, hope, and exaltation...

And now at last, was come the time!

Brother Poole, again wearing the look on his face as of an electric light turned on within, exhorted the repentant ones to "stand up and testify."

Missy couldn't bear to wait for someone else to begin. She jumped hastily to her feet. Grandma tried to pull her down. Missy frowned slightly--why was grandma tugging at her skirt? Tugging aways she extended her arms with palms flat together and thumbs extended--one of Brother Poole's most effective gestures--and began:

"My soul rejoiceth because I have seen the light. Yea, it burns in my soul and my soul is restoreth. I will fear no evil even if it is born again. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I have been a sinner but--"

Why was grandma pulling at her skirt? Missy twitched away and, raising her voice to a higher key, went on:

"I said I've been a sinner, but I've repented my sins and want to lead a blameless life. I repent my sins--O Lord, please forgive me for being a spy-eye when Cousin Pete kissed Polly Currier, and guide me to lead a blameless life. Amen."

She sat down.

A great and heavenly stillness came and wrapped itself about her, a soft and velvety stillness; to shut out gasp or murmur or stifled t.i.tter.

The miracle had happened! It was as if an inner light had been switched on; a warm white light which tingled through to every fibre of her being. Surely this was the flame divine! It was her soul being born anew...

CHAPTER II. "Your True Friend, Melissa M."

Missy knew, the moment she opened her eyes, that golden June morning, that it was going to be a happy day. Missy, with Poppylinda purring beside her, found this mysterious, irradiant feeling flowing out of her heart almost as tangible as a third live being in her quaint little room. It seemed a sort of left-over, still vaguely attached, from the wonderful dream she had just been having. Trying to recall the dream, she shut her eyes again; Missy's one regret, in connection with her magical dreams, was that the sparkling essence of them was apt to become dim when she awoke. But now, when she opened her eyes, the suffusion still lingered.

For a long, quiet, blissful moment, she lay smiling at the spot where the sunlight, streaming level through the lace-curtained window, fell on the rose-flowered chintz of the valances. Missy liked those colours very much; then her eyes followed the beam of light to where it spun a prism of fairy colours on the mirror above the high-boy, and she liked that ecstatically. She liked, too, by merely turning her head on the pillow, to glimpse, through the parting of the curtains, the ocean of blue sky with its flying cloud s.h.i.+ps, so strange; and to hear the morning song of the birds and the happy hum of insects, the music seeming almost to filter through the lace curtains in a frescoed pattern which glided, alive, along the golden roadway of suns.h.i.+ne. She even liked the monotonous metallic rattle which betold that old Jeff was already at work with the lawn-mower.

All this in a silent moment crammed to the full with vibrant ecstasy; then Missy remembered, specifically, the Wedding drawing every day nearer, and the new Pink Dress, and the glory to be hers when she should strew flowers from a huge leghorn hat, and her rapture brimmed over.

Physically and spiritually unable to keep still another second, she suddenly sat up.

"Oh, Poppylinda!" she whispered. "I'm so happy--so happy!"

Everyone knows--that is, everyone who knows kittens--that kittens, like babies, listen with their eyes. To Missy's whispered confidence, Poppylinda, without stirring, opened her lids and blinked her yellow eyes.

"Aren't you happy, too? Say you're happy, Poppy, darling!"

Poppy was stirred to such depths that mere eye-blinking could not express her emotion. She opened her mouth, so as to expose completely her tiny red tongue, and then, without lingual endeavour, began to hum a gentle, crooning rumble down somewhere near her stomach. Yes; Poppy was happy.

The spirit of thanksgiving glamorously enwrapped these two all the time Missy was dressing. Like the efficient big girl of twelve that she was, Missy drew her own bath and, later, braided her own hair neatly. As she tied the ribbons on those braids, now crossed in a "coronet" over her head, she gave the ghost of a sigh. This morning she didn't want to wear her every-day bows; but dutifully she tied them on, a big brown cabbage above each ear. When she had scrambled into her checked gingham "sailor suit," all spick and span, Missy stood eying herself in the mirror for a wistful moment, wis.h.i.+ng her tight braids might metamorphose into lovely, hanging curls like Kitty Allen's. They come often to a "strange child"--these moments of vague longing to overhear one's self termed a "pretty child"--especially on the eve of an important occasion.

But thoughts of that important occasion speedily chased away consciousness of self. And downstairs in the cheerful dining room, with the family all gathered round the table, Missy, her cheeks glowing pink and her big grey eyes as.h.i.+ne, found it difficult to eat her oatmeal, for very rapture. In the bay window, the geraniums on the sill nodded their great, biossomy heads at her knowingly. Beyond, the big maple was stirring its leaves, silver side up, like music in the breeze. Away across the yard, somewhere, Jeff was making those busy, restful sounds with the lawn-mower. These alluring things, and others stretching out to vast mental distances, quite deadened, for Missy, the family's talk close at hand.

"When I ran over to the Greenleaf's to borrow the sugar," Aunt Nettie was saying, "May White was there, and she and Helen hurried out of the dining room when they saw me. I'm sure they'd been crying, and--"

"S-s.h.!.+" warned Mrs. Merriam, with a glance toward Missy. Then, in a louder tone: "Eat your cereal, Missy. Why are you letting it get cold?"

Missy brought her eyes back from s.p.a.ce with an answering smile. "I was thinking," she explained.

"What of, Missy?" This, encouragingly, from father.

"Oh, my dream, last night."

"What did you dream about?"

"Oh--mountains," replied Missy, somewhat vaguely.

"For the land's sake!" exclaimed Aunt Nettie. "What ever put such a thing into her head? She never saw a mountain in her life!" Grown-ups have a disconcerting way of speaking of children, even when present, in the third person. But Aunt Nettie finally turned to Missy with a direct (and dreaded): "What did they look like, Missy?"

"Oh--mountains," returned Missy, still vague.

At a sign from mother, the others did not press her further. When she had finished her breakfast, Missy approached her mother, and the latter, reading the question in her eyes, asked:

"Well, what is it, Missy?"

"I feel--like pink to-day," faltered Missy, half-embarra.s.sed.

But her mother did not ask for explanation. She only pondered a moment.

"You know," reminded the supplicant, "I have to try on the Pink Dress this morning."

"Very well, then," granted mother. "But only the second-best ones."

Missy's face brightened and she made for the door.

Before she got altogether out of earshot, Aunt Nettie began: "I don't know that it's wise to humour her in her notions. 'Feel like pink!'--what in the world does she mean by that?"

Missy was glad the question had not been put to her; for, to have saved her life, she couldn't have answered it intelligibly. She was out of hearing too soon to catch her mother's answer:

"She's just worked up over the wedding, and being a flower-girl and all."

"Well, I don't believe," stated Aunt Nettie with the a.s.surance that spinsters are wont to show in discussing such matters, "that it's good for children to let them work themselves up that way. She'll be as much upset as the bridegroom if Helen does back out."

"Oh, I don't think old Mrs. Greenleaf would ever let her break it off, now" said Mrs. Merriam, stooping to pick up the papers which her husband had left strewn over the floor.

"She's hard as rocks," agreed Aunt Nettie.

"Though," Mrs. Merriam went on, "when it's a question of her daughter's happiness--"

"A little unhappiness would serve Helen Green leaf right," commented the other tartly. "She's spoiled to death and a flirt. I think it was a lucky day for young Doc Alison when she jilted him."

"She's just young and vain," championed Mrs. Merriam, carefully folding the papers and laying them in the rack. "Any pretty girl in Helen's position couldn't help being spoiled. And you must admit nothing's ever turned her head--Europe, or her visits to Cleveland, or anything."

"The Cleveland man is handsome," said Aunt Nettie irrelevantly--the Cleveland man was the bridegroom-elect.