“Yes, but after he’d sat for the bas relief, there it was with a full beard, and now he’s clean shaven, and Cousin Roxy says if he didn’t get the stone cutter over to give the bas relief a shave too.” Down Huckleberry Hill they drove with all its hollows and bumps and “thank-ye-ma’ams.” These were the curved rises where the road ran over a hidden culvert. Gilead Center lay in a valley, a scattered lot of white houses set back from the road in gardens with the little church, country store and Town Hall in the middle of it. The carriage sheds were already filled with teams, so the horses were blanketed and left hitched outside with a lot of others. Inside, the little hall was filled with people, the boys perched up on the windowsills where they could get a good view of the long curtained-off platform that was used as a stage. Cousin Roxy was busy at her end of the room, preparing the supper behind a partition, with Mrs. Peckham and Mrs. Gorham to help. Around the two great drum stoves clustered the men and older boys, and the Judge seemed to loom quite naturally above these as leader. Savory odors came from the corner, and stray tuning up sounds from another corner, where Mr. Graves sat, the center of an admiring group of youngsters. Flags were draped and crossed over doorways and windows, and bunting festooned over the top of the stage. Jean took charge behind the curtain, getting the children ready for their different parts in the tableaux. Then she went down to the old tinkling, yellow keyed piano and everybody stood up to sing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” “Land alive, it does grip the heartstrings, doesn’t it?” Cousin Roxy exclaimed, once that was over. “I often wish I’d done something in my life to give folks a happy holiday every time my birthday came ’round.” Then the Judge rose and took the platform, so tall that his head just missed the red, white and blue bunting overhead. And he spoke of Lincoln until it seemed as if even the smallest children in the front rows must have seen and known him too. Jean and Kit always enjoyed one of the Judge’s speeches, not so much for what he said, as for the pleasure of watching Cousin Roxy’s face. She sat on the end of a seat towards the back now, all in her favorite gray silk, her spectacles half way down her nose, her face upraised and smiling as she watched her sweetheart deliver his speech. “When you look at her you know what it means in the Bible by people’s faces shining, don’t you?” whispered Kit, as the Judge finished in a pounding applause in which hands, feet and chair legs all played their part.