“Grandma,” said Alice one evening when she and Bobby and Pink had come into Grandma’s room, “do you believe that if you look over your right shoulder at the new moon and make a wish that it will come true?”
“Naw,” jeered Bobby, “course not.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Grandma answered thoughtfully. “A wish made that way could come true. I made a wish once over a white horse and a red-haired girl that came true.”
“Tell us about it Grandma. Please tell us,” coaxed Alice.
Grandma found her knitting and began.
“The red-haired girl,” she said, “was Betty Bard, our preacher’s granddaughter. She had lived at the parsonage with her grandparents for nearly a year, and next to Annie Brierly she was my best friend. The white horse belonged to old Mrs. Orbison, who with several other women had come to help sister Belle quilt her ‘Rose of Sharon.’
“Betty and I were playing under the apple tree in the side yard. That is, we were trying to play. We couldn’t find any game we liked. We kept thinking that this might be our last afternoon together. You see, conference was to meet the next week, and Betty didn’t seem to think her grandfather would be sent back to preach on Redding circuit. I didn’t think so either. Redding circuit was very hard to please, and though Father never found fault with any of our preachers and always paid his tithes, still I knew that Brother Bard was not popular. Betty said it was because he did good by stealth and no one ever found it out.
“‘If I move away,’ said Betty as we sat under the apple tree talking that afternoon, ‘you may have my playhouse rock at school, Sarah, and all my dahlia roots, and the black kitten. The kitten’s name is Bad Boy because he jumps on the table when no one is looking. And you must be sure to dig the dahlias up before frost.’
“Just then Mrs. Orbison’s voice floated out through the open sitting-room window.
“‘It all depends on the sermon he preaches tomorrow,’ she said. ‘If they don’t like it, a letter goes to the Presiding Elder saying we will not tolerate Brother Bard another year and that in case he is sent back against our wishes we will not pay him anything.’
“I looked quickly at Betty to see if she had heard, and I knew by the flush on her cheeks that she had. I put my arm through hers and we walked slowly toward the front gate. It was then I made my wish. I looked at Mrs. Orbison’s white horse turned out to graze in the orchard across the road and at Betty’s red head, and I said to myself, ‘I wish for Betty not to move away.’ Out loud I said to Betty, ‘Can’t you tell your grandpa to preach a sermon they’ll like, Betty, so you won’t have to go away?’
“‘But how would he know what they’d like?’ she asked in a puzzled tone.
“‘Oh, just something pleasant,’ I answered cheerfully, ‘something nice and pleasant.’
“‘I’ll tell him what Mrs. Orbison said,’ she promised before she went home, ‘and he can do what he thinks best.’
“We stopped at the parsonage the next morning to take Betty into the surrey with us because her grandma seldom went to meeting, not being very strong. I could hardly wait till Betty and I got around a corner of the church to ourselves.
“‘What did your grandpa say?’ I asked eagerly.
“‘He said he’d do his duty as he saw it, and grandma said he stayed up all night. She crept downstairs three times to beg him to come to bed.’
“This did not sound very encouraging, but when I heard the text I breathed a sigh of relief. It was, ‘Now if Timotheus come, see that he may be with you without fear, for he worketh the work of the Lord as I also do.’ I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded like a safe text, and I became so interested in watching a robin hopping on the window sill that I did not notice what Preacher Bard was saying until I felt Betty straighten up and clutch my hand.
“I looked around to see what had happened, and I knew in a minute that he had not preached a sermon to please them. Amazement, indignation, surprise, showed plainly in the upturned faces. I won’t try to tell you what was in that sermon, only this—that, in the hope of making things easier for his successor, Reverend Bard had undertaken in a kindly way to open the eyes of the Mt. Zion people to some of their faults. They had found fault with all the preachers. Now he pointed out a few of their own shortcomings, and they didn’t like it—no, indeed, not a bit.
“When it was over, the congregation poured out of the church, filled the little yard, and overflowed into the graveyard beyond. No one offered to leave. They stood around in groups—whispering, shaking their heads gravely, pressing their lips in grim lines.
“As soon as the preacher left for his afternoon appointment the storm broke. No one paid any attention to Betty as she stood at the horseblock with me waiting for Father to come round with the surrey. Everybody talked at once.
“‘He doesn’t preach the straight gospel—he tells too many tales.’
“‘He doesn’t visit enough.’
“‘He favors pouring, when we’ve always stood for immersion.’
“These remarks and many others Betty and I heard as we waited there for Father. Betty must have stood it just as long as she possibly could. Then suddenly she jerked away from me and climbed to the horseblock. I can see her now—her red hair flying in the breeze, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed.
“‘My grandfather’s the best man in the world,’ she cried, and stamped her foot angrily. ‘He’s the best man in the world, I tell you. I don’t care what you say, he’s the best man in the world,’ and she crumpled down in a little sobbing heap.
The congregation stood around in groups—whispering and shaking their heads gravely
“Father came up then and, putting an arm around Betty, he said, ‘Let us pray,’ and everybody bowed his head and Father prayed. He prayed a long time, and at the last there were lots of ‘Amens’ and ‘Praise the Lords’ just as in big meeting.
“The second Father finished, an old man stepped out in front and said in a halting way that he would like every one to know that when his cow died in the winter Preacher Bard had bought him another. That started things. A young man said the preacher had sat up with him every other night for six weeks when he had typhoid fever. A boy said the preacher had bought him school books, and the Widow Spears said he had given her twenty dollars when her house burned. An old lady told how he read one afternoon a week to her husband who was blind, and so on and on and on. Everybody wanted to tell something good about Preacher Bard.
“Before the meeting broke up a big donation party was planned for Monday night, and Mother got Mrs. Bard to let Betty come home with us so she wouldn’t give it away. Monday was a busy day. While the women baked and cooked for the party, the men raised money to put a new roof on the parsonage, to buy a suit of clothes for Brother Bard, a black silk dress for Mrs. Bard, so stiff it would stand alone, and a blue delaine for Betty.
“How we surprised the Bards that night when we all went in, and what a good time we had! But the best part was when Deacon Orbison, who had been opposed to the preacher from the first, got up on a chair and made a speech. He said it seemed to him Redding circuit could not afford to lose a man like Reverend Bard, that his salary and benevolences had been made up in full, and that a letter would be sent the Presiding Elder asking that he be returned for another year. He was returned, and Betty and I sat together at school that winter, so you see I got my wish.
“Well, well, if it isn’t bedtime for three little children I know. Pass the apples, Bobby, please, and next time I’ll tell you—well, I just don’t know what I shall tell you next time, but I’ll have something for you.”