ht of a blue ribbon painted in gold
shining on the breast of each one of the twenty-nine women. A pale blue
ribbon painted in gold with--yes, peering her eyes she discovered that
it was the word "WELCOME!" The forced smile vanished from Angeline's
face. Her eyes grew wet, her cheek white. Her proud figure shrank. She
turned and looked back at her husband. Not for one instant did she
appropriate the compliment to herself. "This is for _you_!" her spirit
called out to him, while a new pride dawned in her working face.

Forty years had she spent apologizing for Abraham, and now she
understood how these twenty-nine generous old hearts had raided him to
the pedestal of a hero, while she stood a heroine beside him. Angy it
was who trembled now, and Abe, gaining a manly courage from that, took
hold of her arm to steady her--they had paused on a step near the foot
of the stairs--and, looking around with his whimsical smile, he demanded
of the bedecked company in general, "Ladies, be yew 'spectin' the
President?"

Cackle went the cracked old voices of the twenty-nine in a chorus of
appreciative laughter, while the old heads bobbed at one another as if
to say, "Won't he be an acquisition?" And then, from among the group
there came forward Blossy--Blossy, who had sacrificed most that this
should come to pass; Blossy, who had sat till midnight painting the
gold-and-blue ribbons; Blossy, the pride and beauty of the Home, in a
delicate, old, yellow, real lace gown. She held her two hands gracefully
and mysteriously behind her back as she advanced to the foot of the
stairs. Looking steadily into Abraham's eyes, she kept a-smiling until
he felt as if the warmth of a belated spring had beamed upon him.

"The President!" Her mellow, well-modulated voice shook, and she laughed
with a mingling of generous joy and tender pity. "Are we expecting the
President? You dear modest man! We are welcoming--_you_!"

Abe looked to Angy as if to say, "How shall I take it?" and behold! the
miracle of his wife's bosom swelling and swelling with pride in him. He
turned back, for Blossy was making a speech. His hand to his head, he
bent his good ear to listen. In terms poetical and touching she
described the loneliness of the life at the Home as it had been with no
man under the roof of the house and only a deaf-and-dumb gardener, who
hated her sex, in the barn. Then in contrast she painted life as it must
be for the sisters now that the thirty tender v