WHILE the minister spoke faces strained upwards toward him, as if they were sniffing in the words he said with their nostrils. There were gaunt men and tired looking women, old before their time. There were boys and girls, wan and stunted of the second and third generation of those who had worked in the mills. They seemed about ten or twelve, but they were old enough to be looking at each other, thinking of marriage. The faces, raised to the light, seemed to have no flesh, but to be made of bone with skin stretched tightly over it.
When the preacher finished and the people turned to each other for talk, their faces showed color and some animation. The town preacher shook hands with his colleagues on the platform and hurried away to his home and children. Bonnie stood near Granpap who was talking with Frank.
“What he said had sense,” Granpap told Frank. “If the rich could get the grace of Jesus Christ in their hearts, hit stands to reason we’d all have enough.”
“I didn’t like so much his speaking about us as being pore so much,” Frank said. “If he’d spoke it just once . . .”
“No,” Granpap answered before Frank could finish, “hit didn’t seem to fit in exactly. But what he says is mighty true. Only all the rich would have t’ do it together—for there are so many pore.”
“You run along, Bonnie,” Ora spoke to Bonnie and gave her a push with her big hand. “Go and mix with the girls. The young men will be in soon. Can’t you see how Lessie and Tiny and the rest are watching that door? You mustn’t let them grab all the boys from ye.”
Bonnie wished to do what Ora wanted. She was not very timid at home, but her greatest desire was to get between Granpap and Ora and hide the fact that she was there at all. Suppose no one picked her out—no one thought her box good enough to buy!
They were giving out gifts from the tree, a bag of candy and an orange for each child. Facing Granpap Bonnie heard the door to the yard open. She heard the heavy steps and knew the young men had come into the hall.
“You go along,” Ora insisted. “Mr. Burnett’s going t’ speak. You go nearer and listen.”
Some of the women had gone up front to find their young ones and take them home. People were walking around and talking together. But when Mr. Burnett rose to speak there was silence.
Mr. Burnett said he would not make a speech. He only wished to give them all a Merry Christmas from the management, the Directors, and the President of the Company. Before anyone left he wanted to ask them all to join in singing the Doxology. Bonnie, who had slowly made her way into the crowd of people, raised her voice and sang with the rest. When the Doxology was finished someone began “The Old Time Religion.”
Bonnie, singing “It was good for Paul and Silas,” heard someone speak in her ear. She turned and her cheek brushed against the cheek of a young man. She looked at him. This was one she had never seen before, but in the short glance he gave it was plain that he was not one who might be speaking to her because he was unwanted elsewhere. He was not tall like the men of her family, but she saw blue eyes, and brown silky hair brushed back from a white forehead, which frowned at her coaxingly, as if saying, “Don’t be too hard on me.”
“I asked if I could talk with you,” he said. “But you didn’t seem to hear.”
She looked up again, and the flush that had been on her face before came up into her cheeks.
“You have the prettiest mouth,” he said, “of any girl here.”
“And you can talk the prettiest,” Bonnie answered him, “of any man here.”
“I don’t know just how to take that,” he told her.
“I think I’ll have to be going,” Bonnie said. She felt that she must have spoken the wrong words.
He reached out and touched her arm. “Don’t go away,” he begged. “I’m a stranger here and need a friend.
“They’re going to sell the boxes, now,” he added, holding her arm lightly with his fingers. “Wait.” She felt each of his fingers touching her lightly on the arm just above her elbow. They were like bolts that held her to him.
They watched Mr. Turnipseed, with the help of one of the boys, lift the table loaded with boxes of all colors to the platform. All the other people had gone from the stage, and in the auditorium the onlookers were settling down on the benches around the room preparing for the auction. They passed Bonnie and her new friend, and some of them, knowing Bonnie, looked curiously at her. She did not even see them, and her voice answering questions seemed far away, as if she was in a cloud on a mountain and heard someone speaking far down in the valley.
“What’s your name?”
“Bonnie McClure.”
“Will you tell me what your box is like, Bonnie?”
“It’s—why, I don’t know whether I should say.”
“You tell me.”
“It’s yellow crepe paper with silver stars.”
“Jim,” one of the young men from the side of the room called out.
“My name is Jim Calhoun,” Bonnie’s friend said. “And you’re my girl. Don’t forget.” He pressed her arm and went over to those who had called.
“Come here, Bonnie.” Lessie Hampton made a place on her bench, and Bonnie joined the group of girls who were strong in the confidence that their boxes were already as good as taken.
“Is he going to buy your box?” Lessie asked her.
“I don’t know,” Bonnie answered, for she was not yet certain that what was promised would come to pass.
“Watch out, Bonnie,” another said. “Jim Calhoun has a name for being mighty fickle.”
Bonnie looked toward the young men and saw Jim Calhoun talking intimately with the others. He had said he was a stranger, but he seemed to know people and they to know him. Somehow it didn’t matter.
Mr. Turnipseed brought his fist down on the stand. “What am I bid for this beautiful box?” he asked, holding up a box covered with white paper, and decorated with red hearts.
Someone made a timid bid. Mr. Turnipseed shook the box close to his ear. “Sounds like there’s mighty good things in there,” he said.
The bidding was slow at first, but it gathered interest with every box sold. Mr. Turnipseed reached for another and then another box. Still Bonnie’s yellow one remained on the table. She almost hoped he would overlook it altogether.
As soon as a young man bid in a box he opened it to find out the name of his partner for supper. Bonnie had written her name many times before she had made the writing as she wanted it. The slip lay in her box, on top, “Bonnie McClure,” in large round letters.
Some of the young men frowned when they saw the names in their boxes. And this was what she dreaded, that her name would be frowned upon. She would be glad, almost, for Sam Fellows to get her box, if he would only behave as if he was glad to have it. Sam, who was very greedy, had bid in three already, and had three girls around him: but what was more important to him, there were three boxes from which he could choose his supper.
“What am I bid,” Mr. Turnipseed said, “for this box, the color of ripe corn silk.”
Bonnie saw that the box was hers.
“I can just imagine,” Mr. Turnipseed continued holding the box up high so all could see, “I can just imagine the girl who made this exquisite arrangement of stars and crescents. She must be beautiful as the stars, and good and kind as the moon on a summer’s night. What am I bid?”
“Ten cents,” a boy from the right of the platform called out and everyone laughed. But Bonnie wished to hide her face because of the laughter, and because it had brought her down from a high place where Mr. Turnipseed’s words had taken her.
“One dollar,” came from the group of young men. Jim Calhoun was speaking. He stood up and spoke angrily looking in the direction of the boy who had called out “ten cents.”
Mr. Turnipseed said, “One dollar, one dollar.” He held the box to his nose and sniffed at it. “I seem to smell fried chicken,” he said.
Sam Fellows looked up from his three girls and three boxes. “One dollar and twenty cents,” he called out very loud.
“He’s got three. Now he wants more,” the boy from the right said complainingly.
“I haven’t got one with fried chicken,” Sam Fellows called back.
“One twenty. One twenty,” Mr. Turnipseed droned.
Jim Calhoun bid again, and Sam followed him. Some of the other young men, finding that a game was going on, joined in the bidding, until Bonnie’s box sold the highest of any—to Jim Calhoun.
By this time most of the girls were gone from Bonnie’s group, claimed by the young men who had bid in their boxes. Bonnie sat on the bench, her hands lying loosely in her lap, her face tense with happiness and expectation. When Jim Calhoun came toward her with the box under his arm, while people clapped because the bidding had been so close, she closed her fists together in her lap to keep her hands from going right out to meet him. He was so welcome.
That night, for the first time in months Granpap and John walked together. All the way on the country road in the dark ahead of them, they heard Bonnie and the young man, Jim Calhoun walking, occasionally stumbling in the ruts, laughing, and going on. They heard the young man’s low, deep talk and Bonnie’s rather high voice answering him.