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know.”
    He felt thoroughly refrigerated by the time the old man located the stack of yellowed papers and withdrew an envelope. With a trembling hand, he gave it to the rector.
    “It’s m‘ tithe,” he said, his voice breaking. “Th’ Lord give me that money for my pen an‘ ink drawin’s that Miss Cynthia sold, and I’m givin’ His part back.”
    The rector was so moved, he could barely speak. “May the Lord bless you, Bill!”
    “Oh, an‘ He does. Ever’ day, don’t you know.”

    “I’m glad we went,” he said, buttoning his pajama top.
    “Me, too. Even if Miss Rose does scare me half to death!”
    She put her hands on her hips and said fiercely, “I don’t have any banana pudding!”
    “Thanks be to God!” he shouted, as they collapsed on the bed with laughter.

CHAPTER THREE
    Gathered In

    “You LOOKIN‘ at th’ las’ supper,” said Louella.
    As Fernbank’s dining room was closed off for winter, they were sitting at the kitchen table.
    “Louella’s having her knee operation on Thursday,” Miss Sadie reminded her guests. “She won’t be able to cook like this again for a long time.” His hostess, who was also his oldest, not to mention favorite, parishioner, appeared wistful.
    “Who’s driving you to Winston-Salem?” asked Cynthia, who had offered to do it a month earlier.
    “Ed Malcolm. I don’t know how Mr. Leeper heard about it, but somehow he did, and gave Ed the day off so he can drive us. Have you ever?”
    “Extraordinary,” said the rector. Buck Leeper, the abrasive, profane, don’t-tread-on-me supervisor of the Hope House project ...
    Cynthia helped herself to another deviled egg. “How long will you be there?”
    “Five days, we think,” said Miss Sadie.
    “What will you do down there for five days? And where will you stay?”
    “I’ll have a cot in Louella’s room!”
    “She goan baby me,” said Louella, looking sunny. Miss Sadie had babied Louella, who had been born at Fernbank, since they were children. In recent years, however, circumstances had begotten the reverse.
    Five nights on a hospital cot? he thought. Not good.
    “Louella would do the same for me.”
    “Amen!” pronounced Louella, passing the mashed potatoes. “Y‘all eat these up. We don’t have no puppy dogs t’ feed ‘em to.”
    He could tell that his wife was in seventh heaven, eating like a trencherman and happy as a child. She looked at him and smiled. “Keep your eyes off the gravy, dearest.”
    Lord knows, he was trying. “What will you do when you come back? Surely the stairs ...”
    Louella will sleep down here in the kitchen.“
    “For how long?”
    “The doctor said no stairs for three months.”
    “We ain’t tol‘ him our stairs go almos’ to th’ Pearly Gates. How many we got, Miss Sadie?”
    “Twenty-nine! Papa wanted thirty, but it didn’t work out.”
    Sadie Baxter alone at night on that cavernous second floor? And what if Louella were to take a tumble on this cracked and broken linoleum? He didn’t like the sound of the plan, not at all.
    “When we go up at night, we go together,” said Louella. “But sometime, it’s more settin‘ down than goin’ up.”
    “That’s right. Sometimes it takes so long to get to the top, it’s nearly time to start back to the bottom!”
    “Me an‘ Miss Sadie, we sing our way up. I say, Do you remember ’To You before the close of day ...‘? She say, Sho’ I do, you start and I’ll jump in. We set there and sing a verse, then we climb up another little step or two. Sometime, we go through two or three hymns jus’ to lay our bones down.”
    “And sometimes,” said Miss Sadie, inspired by the excitement of revelation, “we don’t come downstairs at all.”
    “Miss Sadie, she keep candy in her vanity, an‘ I keeps Spam and loaf bread in my bureau. We watch th’ soaps and th‘ news.”
    “We play checkers, or go ramble in the attic. I love to ramble in the attic. It keeps me young to remember old