Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1898 — Lois’ Decoration Day. [ARTICLE]

Lois’ Decoration Day.

Lois sat on the doorstep, listening hard. She could hear the faint tnm-tum of the drum and occasionally a high, sweet note of the fife. But the cemetery was a long way off, where they were decorating soldiers’ graves. That was why mamma had left little Lois at home. “Pohl As if ’twould’ve tired me a single miteT’ she murmured, “an’ I wouldn’t have cared if it did, if I only could’ve seen ’em plant flags and flowers! Oh, dear, I feel’s if I was going to cry, I feel so diserpoinrted. Mamma said to take care o’ grandpa, but I can’t when he’s asleep.” She tiptoed back to the sitting room door and looked in. There eat dear old grandpa, nodding his white head in the sun. “I guess he’s dreaming about when he was a soldier,” Lois thought. A runaway sunbeam stole across grandpa’s forehead, and she hurried softly to draw down the shade. “Why!” she breathed, in a little flash of inspiration, “I’m going to have a Dec’ration Day my own self! I know whet I can do.” Out in the garden there were pansies and nodding poppies, and oh, snch a host of little, rosy baby apple blossoms—buds and buds and buds! Lois picked her apron full of them two or three times over, and then sat down on the doorstep and made long strings and queer, . wobbly wreaths of them. When they were all done she carried them softly back to the sitting room. Grandpa’s white head was still nid-nod-ding, and grandpa’s smiling, gentle old face was full of peace. Very quietly indeed Lois hung the wreaths round grandpa’s neck and wrists, and trailed the twisted strings of buds across his chair. “He’s my soldier, an’ I’ve dec’rated him all myself," she whispered admiringly, standing off to look. But it was warm, and Lois was tired with her work; and when mamma came home by and by they were both asleep in the sun—little girl Lois and dear old “decorated” grandpa.—Youth’s Companion.