Out to Canaan (246 page)

They circled around to the front steps and honked, as Andrew and Anna came to the door and opened it and waved, calling out felicitations of their own. “Don't mention this to Rodney Underwood!” he said to the couple on the porch.

Andrew laughed. “Our lips are sealed!
Joyeux noël!
”

“
Ciao!
” cried Anna. “Come soon again!”

They eased down the Fernbank drive and saw the town lying at the foot of the steep hill like a make-believe village under a tree. There was the huge fir at Town Hall with its ropes of colored lights, and the glittering ribbon of Main Street, and the shining houses.

An English writer, coincidentally named Mitford, had said it so well, he could recite it like a schoolboy.

She had called her village “a world of our own, close-packed and insulated like . . . bees in a hive or sheep in a fold or nuns in a convent or sailors in a ship, where we know everyone, and are authorized to hope that everyone feels an interest in us.”

Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere
 . . .

After a stop by Tommy's and then by Hattie Cloer's, they headed home.

“Harley, want to have a cup of tea with us before tonight's service?”

“No, sir, Rev'rend, I'm tryin' t' fool with a batch of fudge brownies to bring upstairs tomorrow.”

Temptation on every side, and no hope for it.

“Say, Dad, want to watch a video before church? Tommy loaned me his VCR. It's a baseball movie, you'll like it.”

If there were a tax on joy on this night of nights, he'd be dead broke.

“Consider it done!” he said.

He sat clutching the pint of cream in a bag, feeling they'd gone forth and captured some valuable trophy or prize, as they rode slowly between the ranks of angels on high and turned onto their trackless street.

 

Jan Karon, who lives in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, was an award-winning advertising executive before following her dream of writing books. She is the author of three previous Mitford novels,
At Home in Mitford, A Light in the Window
, and
These High, Green Hills
, all available from Penguin.
At Home in Mitford
was named an ABBY Honor Book by the American Booksellers Association.