Family Pride

This was in the afternoon and was all forgotten now, when with her Sunday clothes she never would have worn in that jam but for the great occasion, Aunt Betsy elbowed her way up the middle aisle, her face wearing a very important and knowing look, especially when Uncle Ephraim's tall figure bent for a moment under the hemlock boughs, and then disappeared in the little vestry room where he held a private consultation with the rector. That she knew something her neighbors didn't was evident. But she kept it to herself, turning her head occasionally to look up at the organ where Katy was presiding. Others, too, there were who turned their heads as the soft liquid music began to fill the church, and the heavy bass rolled up the aisles, making the floor tremble beneath their feet and sending a thrill through every vein. It was a skillful hand which swept the keys that night, for Katy's forte was music, and she played with her whole soul, not the voluntary there before her in printed form, nor any one thing she had ever heard, but taking parts of many things, and mingling them with strains of her own improvising, she filled the house as it had never been filled before, playing a soft, sweet refrain when she thought of Helen, then bursting into louder, fuller tones, when she remembered Bethlehem's child and the song the angels sang, and then as she recalled her own sacrifice since she knelt at the altar a happy bride, the organ notes seemed much like human sobs, now rising to a stormy pitch of passion, wild and uncontrolled, and then dying out as dies the summer wind after a fearful storm. Awed and wonderstruck the organ boy looked at Katy as she played, almost forgetting his part of the performance in his amazement, and saying to himself when she had finished: "Guy, though, ain't she a brick," and whispering to her: "Didn't we go that strong?"

Katy knew she had made an impression, and her cheeks were very red as she went down to the body of the church, joining the children with whom she was to sing, but she soon forgot herself in the happiness of the little ones, who could scarcely be controlled until the short service was over and the gifts about to be distributed. Much the people had wondered where Helen was, as, without the aid of music, Katy led the children in their carols, and this wonder increased when as time passed on it was whispered around that "Miss Lennox had come and was standing with a man back by the register."