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Show 54 TEN Aunt Grace took the lid off the shoe box and began laying the candle stubbs out on the newspapers. "Do we have enough?" Dyna asked. "I could run home and get some from Gram." "Mercy, Dyna! Mary and I could supply the whole city in a blackout. You know we save everything." Spread out, the empty wine bottles and half-used candles covered the dining room table. Dyna rubbed her hands together in glee. "The seniors will think they wandered into an Italian restaurant, won't they?" Miss Mary seated herself, full of smiles and the happy sounds she made under her breath when she was pleased. She signed "this will be fun" across the table at Dyna, then struck a match and held it to her candle. Dyna's eyes, too, lit up like flames. "You guys are as excited about this as I am! Honest to Pete!" "Of course we are! Having poetry read to us by all you lovely young people? I should say so!" : Dyna took her turn with the matches. "Some of our stuff's pretty far out. What if nobody likes free verse? You know, those kids never read Sir Walter Scott or . . . or Hiawatha." "By the shore of Gitche Gumee," Mary began in her high, sibillant speech. Dyna tom-tom'd on the table as Aunt Grace joined in: "By the shining Big-Sea-Water . . -" They all started to laugh. "Hey, remember how us kids acted out Hiawatha on Cathy Sedgewick's porch? With costumes and everything? Oh, man, we thought we were so neat! And you made those cookies for us to sell, Miss Mary, in the shape of wigwams. Remember?" "The gingerbread wigwams!" exclaimed Aunt Grace. "Now, why would you remember a thing like that?" "I never forget a good taste," Dyna giggled, tipping the Mogan David bottle so the colors would run evenly. The hot wax glistened in the light of the old mums* chandelier. |