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The pastor had noticed, naturally, that Johanson had not been forward to the Lord's Supper even when the cellar-master had been helped up the aisle from the poorhouse seat near the door, and Gull and the half-mad poet had decorously followed. At this he had hardly been surprised, for there were other members of the congregation who did not communicate more than once a year.
Johanson sat among the candidates for confirmation the next day among the boys and girls, like a battered old ship that had been dragged into the harbour beside the trim fresh vessels just starting with flying colours for a bright far-away land.
Now he was particularly happy, for he considered himself a kind of presiding officer at the poorhouse, and as such the proper person to show the premises to curious strangers, or to formally install new inmates. On the entrance of Johanson with the pastor's permit, the poet immediately took the odd-looking pauper in hand, to make him at home in the establishment.
I am sure you will be pleased again when you see something in church to-day." Many weeks before Christmas, Johanson had asked permission to go into the church, and to have a tall ladder carried in with him. The pastor was astonished at the request. The permission had been granted. No results of the matter had, however, appeared. The same permission had been given the day before.
So presented, Johanson bowed to the little old woman, who stood up beside the chair in which she had been sitting, and deigned to bend her knees for a courtesy just sufficiently to bring her short skirts possibly one inch nearer the floor.
The carol that was sung was the same that the pastor's wife had chosen to be used at the lighting of the tree in her own home the evening before. The rural choir had practised it well, and it sounded out over the old church like angelic music. At the first notes Johanson started and covered his face with his hands.
There had been some hammering then, he understood, but had no misgivings in the matter, as he had begun to trust Johanson as an upright, honest man. There were surprise and delight on all faces when they entered the church for the early service on Christmas morning. Of course there was a perfect blaze of light within, but that they had expected.
The other eleven who boarded the train with Marion, the holiday hostess, were Ruth Hazelton, Ethel Zimmerman, Ernestine Johanson, Hazel Edwards, Azalia Atwood, Harriet Newcomb, Estelle Adler, Julietta Hyde, Marie Crismore, Katherine Crane, and Violet Munday. Miss Ladd, the Guardian, also was one of Marion's invited guests.
It means something," and she looked up questioningly into his face. The picture was a most admirable representation of the Good Shepherd bearing a lost lamb home on His shoulders. Johanson was silent. "You don't know about it, then? I will tell you," she said, and went on, while her tiny finger was impressively pointing from lamb to shepherd, and from shepherd to lamb.
The good man felt a sudden repulsion towards the stranger still without the Christian pale. "You wish then to be confirmed?" said the pastor, looking Johanson directly in the eye. "I wish to receive the instruction, and it will be your duty to judge of my fitness afterwards," was the reply.
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