A New Song Read Online Free PDF

laughter of the girl he’d known all those years ago. . . .
    He stood, stunned and happy, tears springing to his eyes as suddenly as her laughter had come.
     
    Father Tim found the china assortment fascinating. He could spot several pieces of French Haviland in a pattern his grandmother had owned, and not a few pieces of Sevres.
    At least he thought it was Sevres. He picked up a bread-and-butter plate and peered discreetly at the bottom. Meissen. What did he know?
    He certainly didn’t know what to do about the banana pudding. Everyone except themselves had been asked to bring a covered dish, so there was plenty to choose from. Miss Rose, however, stood like a sentinel by the stove, making sure that all comers had a hefty dose of what had taken her a full afternoon to create.
    All those cracks in the china, he thought, all those chips and chinks . . . weren’t they a known hideout for germs, a breeding ground? And hadn’t he sat by the hospital bed of a woman who had put her feet under Rose Watson’s table and barely lived to tell about it?
    He could remember the story plainly. “Lord knows, I hadn’t hardly got home before my stomach started rumblin’ and carryin’ on, you never heard such a racket. Well, Preacher, I hate to tell you such a thing, but you’ve heard it all, anyhow—five minutes later, I was settin’ on th’ toilet, throwin’ up on my shoes.”
    He had not forgotten the mental image of that good lady throwing up on her shoes. He certainly hadn’t forgotten her dark warning never to eat a bite or drink a drop at Rose Watson’s house.
    “Fill y’r plates and march into th’ front room!” Their host’s gold tooth gleamed. “Some’s already in there, waitin’ for th’ blessin’.”
    Cynthia served herself from the pudding bowl as if she hadn’t eaten a bite since Rogation Sunday.
    “Fall to, darling,” she said, happy as a child.
    Oh, the everlasting gusto of his spouse! He sighed, peering around for the ham biscuits.
    He found that everyone was oddly excited about being in a place as prominent as the town museum. It was a little awkward, however, given that not a single chair could be found, and they all had to mill around with their plates in their hands, setting their tea glasses on windowsills and stair steps.
    The jukebox boomed out what he thought was “Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy,” and laid a steady rhythm into the bare floorboards.
    He and Cynthia made a quick tour of the exhibits, which he’d never, for some reason, taken time to study.
    There was a copy of Willard Porter’s deed to what had been the Mitford Pharmacy and was now Happy Endings Bookstore. There was also a handwritten list of pharmaceuticals that Willard had invented and patented, including Rose Cough Syrup, named for his then-ten-year-old sister, and their hostess for the evening.
    There was the framed certificate declaring the Wurlitzer to be a gift to the town from the owner of the Main Street Grill, where it was unplugged on June 26, 1951. It had been fully restored to mint condition, thanks to the generosity of Mayor Esther Cunningham.
    He examined the daguerreotype of Coot Hendrick’s great-great-grandfather sitting in a straight-back chair with a rifle across his knees.
    It had been Coot’s bearded ancestor, Hezikiah, who settled Mitford, riding horseback up the mountain along an Indian trading path, with his new English bride, Mary Jane, clinging on behind. According to legend, his wife was so homesick that Mr. Hendrick had the generosity of spirit to give the town her maiden name of Mitford, instead of Hendricksville or Hendricksburg, which a man might have preferred to call a place settled by dint of his own hard labors.
    “’At’s my great- great- granpaw,” said Coot Hendrick, coming alongside the preacher and his wife. He’d been waiting to catch someone looking at that picture. For years, it had knocked around in a drawer at his mama’s house, and he’d hardly paid any attention to it at