Martha clapped her hands over her lips to keep back a cry of surprise.
She go to the minister's!

"Your mother always went to the minister when anything was wanted. And
you tell him John Graham wants that pew that he had when the church
was first built--Number 25, on the east side, by the second
window--the one that looks out on the mountains. Your mother and I put
a sight of work and good hard money into the building of that church,
and I ought to have stood right by it all along and not dropped out
just because Sunday clothes cost."

"Oh, pa, did you help build that church?"

"Guess there's plenty round as would tell you so, if you asked, though
this minister don't know, 'cause he's new."

"Say, pa, can't I have a red Bible? Of course it wouldn't be just like
getting into Sunday-school regular, like the primaries, but I would
like a red Bible."

"There it is again! All wrong. There's your mother's Bible; I hain't
meant not to give it to you, only I was a-keepin' it till the further
end of the road came when you'd 'preciate it better."

John Graham got up, and taking down a half-filled lamp, lighted it,
the little girl keeping close at his side. From that same upper bureau
drawer he took out a small package and, undoing the handkerchief
wrapped around it, brought to view a Bible with a gilt clasp.

"It ain't a red Bible, but it's a Bible that has been read," he said.
"And here's your name, just as your mother wrote it for you, almost
the last time she handled it."

He opened the fly-leaf, and little Martha, drawing up close to his
arm, read:

[Illustration: (handwritten) Martha Matilda Graham from her Mother. Be
a good girl, Mattie.]

"Oh, pa, how I am being taken into things!" said the little girl, the
tears toppling over her eyes, and her cheeks bright and rosy.

And then the father took Martha on his lap and talked to her of her
mother--of the life she had lived, and of the Bible she read, and of
the God she loved; talked to her as he had never talked in all her ten
years. When he had ended, she put her arms around his neck and held
him close. The clock struck eight and the father arose, lighted the
little girl's candle, and she mounted the crooked stairs to the small
room above. Setting down the candle, she made herself ready for bed,
buttoning on the little white night-dress made of flour-sacks and with
blue XX's on the back, but which "looked all right in front," as
Jerusha said. This done, she bl