The Weapons of Religion

And send the godly in a pet to pray.

MRS. JACKSON came out on the front porch and looked down the street, between the strings on which the morning-glories had sent up long twining shoots. But there was no man in sight, except the rural delivery driver from Number Six route, in his covered wagon, and the cashier of the bank moving comfortably homeward, with the assurance of supper in his easy gait. Mrs. Jackson went back impatiently into the kitchen. She turned down the flame of the gasoline stove to the very lowest point, and set the creamed potatoes back on it with an asbestos plate under them. Then she opened the oven door and, drawing out a pan of nicely-browning biscuit, turned up a corner one and tapped its inside surface with an experienced finger. After that she went through the hall and looked out of the front door again.

Still there was no one in sight. Now, even the children along the block had responded to calls from their various doors. It was fifteen minutes after six, and in Washburn everybody had supper at six precisely. It was a poorlyregulated family that was lax in the matter. Mrs. Jackson went back and stirred the potatoes, to be sure they were not scorching. Then she got out a folded tea-towel and tucked it in all over the biscuit, though at the same time she murmured impatiently, ‘They’ll be spoiled!’

Presently she went back to the front door. This time she did not go out on the porch. It was nothing less than humiliating for a housewife to wait on the porch for her husband when all other husbands along the street were already presiding at the heads of their tables. But she recklessly held the screen-door open a few inches, regardless of flies, while she pressed her cheek against it to look sidewise up the street. She could see for two blocks, all but one little place in the next square where two tall snow-ball bushes and a spreading box-elder quite hid a gateway. William was not in sight, either on this side of that place or beyond it.

Then suddenly she saw him, on the nearer side of the snow-ball bushes. She had not seen him approach them from beyond, and the deduction to be drawn was evident. She shut the door with a snap and went back into the kitchen. When William came in she was taking up the biscuit:, and to his sprightly ‘Hello!’ she responded only with an unsyllabled murmur, — a murmur that did not commit her to a mood — and did not look up from the oven.

William took a second look at her back; then without saying anything more went into the neat little lavatory that opened from the kitchen, to prepare for supper. After splashing a few moments at the bowl, he laid his dripping hand on the rack of fresh-folded towels beside him, but on second thoughts wiped on the roller-towel instead. Mrs, Jackson, glancing sidewise as she filled the tea-pot, noticed the propitiatory action, but she only compressed her lips a little, and in nowise relaxed her reserve.

‘Supper’s ready,’ she announced in non-committal tones, carrying the teapot into the dining-room.

‘Anything to take in?’ asked William, pausing to look round.

‘No, everything’s here.’

‘I guess I’m a little late,’ William went on as he sat down, in a distinct effort to establish a pleasant atmosphere. ‘Jens Peterson came in to get a gasoline stove, and he stayed looking at the fireless cookers. It beats all how those Swedes take up with things when they get started. He said, “I tank I won’t take no fireless stove dis year.” But he took the best gasoline range we had.’

William knew he could not imitate the Swedish brogue, but he was trying to make sprightly conversation. He ended his little speech with a sort of inquiring glance at his wife, out of keeping with the ease of his manner. But she did not look up or respond, and he meditatively opened a biscuit while he tried to think of something else to say.

Presently, without lifting her eyes from her tea-cup, Mrs. Jackson said, ‘Was that why you were late?’

William hesitated a bare instant, and then said, ‘Yes — he kept me until six, and then I stopped to talk to some one after I left the store.’

Mrs. Jackson said nothing. She was quite sure the delay had been made beside those snow-ball bushes. That was where Mrs. Cora Jessup lived. Three times lately William had stopped there on his way to supper; Amanda knew, because the first two times he had mentioned it. Mrs. Cora Jessup had a great way of being on her porch or in her yard when people passed. She had no one to get supper for but herself, and they did say that she took the care of her household lightly. Besides that, Mrs. Jackson had met her twice in the store in the evening, and lately she had got a habit of walking home from evening church with the Jacksons, and carrying on easy talk with William all the way.

Mrs. Jessup was an indefinite sort of widow, of the kind of widowhood that seems to carry but little recollection of a previous condition of matrimony. There had been a Mr. Jessup, to be sure. But he had been so little of a personage during his life and had taken himself out of the way so completely, that he seemed to have left no perceptible trace upon Mrs. Jessup. She had, however, earned the right to maintain a separate establishment, and to bear herself with the certified importance of a married person, and yet escape the real burdens of matrimony. And the experience that bestowed on her the position of widow had given her an easy manner in establishing relations with men, and an assured familiarity with them. She might have been the widow of twenty men instead of the one pale Henry Jessup.

At some time she had been a milliner, and had acquired from that experience a certainty and enterprise in personal adornment, far surpassing that of the other women of Washburn. She was much given to veils, veils that hung and veils that clung, veils that floated coquettishly on the breeze, and veils that drooped demurely to the shoulder. The Washburn women did not wear veils much except on windy days. Moreover, there was a notion that Mrs. Jessup used her clothes too much as a means of calling attention to her very good figure. In Washburn circles clothes were worn to cover the figures, not to display them. But Mrs. Jessup’s dresses had a fit that made it impossible to forget the flesh and blood beneath them. Some women thought it rather vulgar. Besides that, having plenty of time for herself, she was always reëditing her clothes and bringing them up to date, and no one in town had newer fashions than she, or came out on the street oftener to show them off.

Nobody called Mrs. Jessup a light person. In Washburn they did not make criticism like that openly or rashly. Anyway, it would not have been true. She belonged to the Methodist church, and was valuable in church work, socials and suppers and bazaars, when she took an interest. The women stood rather in awe of her and her ease with men — middle-aged men she was not married to, at that. At a social she could always be relied on to bring the out-lying fringe of halting men into the light activities of the occasion. It was recognized that she could talk to any man, however inarticulate he might be in social life. Men often surprised their wives by their responsiveness in her hands, as compared with their accustomed stiffness. When she fell in with a man on the street he immediately found himself in the midst of a sprightly conversation, returning such repartee as surprised and charmed himself.

It was no wonder that she drew out the good-natured William, on the now increasingly frequent occasions when they met. William was a quiet, grayish man, with a sort of general, mild sociability, partly an extension of his manner in the store, and partly the result of a natural small kindliness. He could always make easy chat with his women customers, and had on hand a stock of trite sprightliness that served the purposes of repartee. Lately Mrs. Jessup had discovered this sort of adaptability in him. Mrs. Jessup found it interesting to talk to almost any man, but it was more interesting to talk to one who could make a retort that would draw out her own powers. So it had proved a pleasant thing to find excuses for dropping into the store for a few minutes of chat across the counter, or to be watering her flowers in the evening at supper-time, and take opportunity for a few pleasantries across the gate — while up the street Amanda Jackson waited supper.

This time Amanda was annoyed. It had not occurred to her to be vexed on the other occasions. An absorbing devotion to William’s comfort and a natural strict conscientiousness in all things, had left in her little tendency to be lightly annoyed over anything. Rut for William to be late to supper, late unnecessarily, and late because he was leaning on Mrs. Jessup’s front gate — that climax of provocations would have irritated the best-natured woman. So for a few minutes she maintained a manner that was frigidly cold.

William relapsed into silence. He knew perfectly well what would be the progress of Amanda’s mood. She would be distant and discouraging for a minute or two, then silent for a little longer; and then would tell herself that this was not right, and would abruptly come back to her normal serious, pleasant tone of mind. And so she did in a minute. Even when presently he inadvertently quoted a remark of Mrs. Jessup’s, she gave no sign of disapproval. And William went back to the store finally with no suspicion of what was really the cause of Amanda’s annoyance. But for a few days after that he was careful to go home directly from the store.

Unfortunately, however, William was not the only one to be reckoned with. Mrs. Jessup was often out in her yard in the mornings and evenings of these pretty September days, and was very ready to throw a remark to a passer-by. It was often a remark that called for an answer, and brought the pedestrian to a pause at her fence. Then her kitchen range was out of order, and she went several times to the hardware store for consultation about it, and even thought it necessary to have Mr. Jackson come to her house to examine it. She kept him talking on the porch afterward, and there he was when Mrs. Jackson passed on her way to a meeting of the Aid Society. Mrs. Jessup called gayly to her to wait, — she would be ready to go along in a minute, — and William went back to the store.

Such little things as these were still occurring when the time for the autumn revival came. In Washburn, after the peaches were canned and the corn was dried, and the children were started in school, and the fall housecleaning was done, and the evenings had grown long, came the yearly revival. Brother Andrews had been announcing it since early in September. Now it was imminent and, as usual, the way was to be prepared for it by means of a series of house prayermeetings. This year, Brother Andrews announced, they would also have afternoon meetings for the women, and he entreated all the sisters to attend those held in their neighborhood. The feminine voice would rise more freely in petition when unembarrassed by masculine hearers, Brother Andrews thought.

So at prayer-meeting on a Wednesday night he asked what women would offer their houses for the first meetings. When Mrs. Jackson’s neighborhood was named she, sitting in a back seat, hesitated a moment, as was always natural to her; but when Mrs. Jessup, in front of her, cleared her throat and leaned forward, Mrs. Jackson spoke up quickly: ‘I’ll take it.’

Mrs. Jessup looked round with an offensively pleasant air, while Mr. Andrews said approvingly, ‘ Sister Jackson can always be counted on for service.’ At the door, when the meeting was over, Mrs. Jackson waited for her husband a moment. He made it his custom to call for her as he came from the store in the evening, having a sort of impression that by so doing he obtained some credit for going to prayer-meeting, though he rarely got more than an unearned benediction. This time Mrs. Jackson had to wait a few minutes for him. And Mrs. Jessup, holding a lively conversation with Brother Andrews at the front of the church, finished it exactly as Mr. Jackson appeared, and so was ready to saunter homeward with him and Amanda. She had enough vivacity left on her hands to carry over into a new conversation.

‘It was perfectly dear of you to take that meeting,’ she began. ‘I was just going to say I would, — I’d do anything for Brother Andrews, — but I’m going to wash my curtains this week and I have my parlor rug up now.’

Mrs. Jessup was a rather ostentatious housekeeper, so far as her housekeeping went. But Mrs. Jackson could not help remembering that the rest of the house-cleaning in town had been done for two weeks.

‘Would you like a job beating rugs, Mr. Jackson?’ she continued coquettishly.

William was walking between the two women. ‘Will you come down and sell implements while I do them?’ he responded jocularly.

‘Do you think I could sell a man a binder?’ asked Mrs. Jessup, her glance taking Mrs. Jackson in on the audacious joke.

‘Sure. That would be the first thing they would ask for when they saw you.’

Mrs. Jessup again, with her eye, invited Mrs. Jackson into the jest, as she and Mr. Jackson laughed together over their smartness. Mrs. Jackson smiled constrainedly. She did not wish to be stiff, but she never had found that kind of talk really amusing. And between a widow and a married man, — even when his wife was along, — it offended her prim notion of good behavior. William’s manner irritated her, too. He was strolling along with a loitering step and a slight hint of a swagger, and at the same time a careful regard for the mannerisms of youth. He had long ago ceased to take his wife’s arm, after the village custom, in going over a crossing. But to-night whenever they came to a crossing he took the elbow of each woman in a gingerly nip, in the manner of the smart youths of the little town.

‘You men,’ said Mrs. Jessup — Mrs. Jessup was always beginning statements coquettishly with ‘You men’ — ‘You men aren’t going to get your share of praying out of these housemeetings.’ She said this with a little laugh over her shoulder, intended to take the edge off her flippancy.

‘You’ll have to pray for us,’ answered William.

‘We’ll hold a special meeting for the men. They certainly need it,’ said Mrs. Jessup, with a smile that invited another retort. She could never talk with any man without reminding him that he was a man and she was a woman.

Mrs. Jackson was moving stiffly along, half-shocked and wholly disgusted. In her youngest, liveliest clays, she had never essayed such dialogue as this. Was this the sort of talk that kept William from his supper, and made him hang conspicuously over Mrs. Jessup’s front gate on his way to the store? To Mrs. Jackson it was of a silliness she could not even comprehend. When Mrs. Jessup would appeal to her with, ‘Don’t you think so?’ or, vivaciously, ‘What would you say to that, Mrs. Jackson?’ as if William were too clever for one woman to answer, Mrs. Jackson could not even think of anything to say. But for the first time she was more annoyed with Mrs. Jessup than with William. He was silly enough, but how could he help it when a woman was acting like this?

She would have gone home in this mood if it had not been for one little thing. They had reached Mrs. Jessup’s gate and had stopped for a minute, Mrs. Jackson waiting in silence with a forced smile on her lips while the others finished their pleasantries. She tried not to wear too detached an air; but as other people passed, and gave a second look to identify the group, she frowned in embarrassed impatience. At last she turned to say good-night to Mrs. Jessup, and to urge William’s departure. But as she did so, something in William’s attitude struck her. The ingratiating turn of his head, the droop of his thin shoulders over the gate, had in them a familiar suggestion. Something like this had been his manner at the Lane gate years ago. The flash of a new conception of the matter took the words from her mouth. Instead of being merely a piece of middle-aged silliness, it suddenly took on something of the reality of a youthful affair. She abruptly cut across their jocularities with a short good-night, and moved on, and William was obliged to follow and join her.

Mrs. Jessup looked after them with a smile in which shrewd amusement took the place of coquetry. Then she gave a little twitch to her shoulders and went into the house.

‘ What’s your hurry? ’ said Mr. Jackson, taking two or three of his short, quick steps to overtake his wife.

‘I have to set bread to-night,’ answered Amanda, after a pause to make sure of her voice.

‘You women set bread at funny times,’ said William, with the intention of starting an easy conversation and carrying over the jocularity that had distinguished the dialogue just closed. It would be something of a novelty to exchange quips with Amanda, but he liked the pleasant exhilaration that went with the exercise.

Mrs. Jackson tried to answer him, but his ‘You women’ reminded her too strongly of Mrs. Jessup’s playful ‘ You men,’ and she halted on her reply, and gave it up. So they finished the walk in silence, William putting on an assumption of ease by pushing his hat jauntily to the back of his head and whistling softly to himself. Mrs. Jackson went straight to the kitchen to set her bread. As she sifted and stirred vigorously, she succeeded in telling herself that she was very foolish, that William had acted like a sort of goose, but then any man — But when she was through and went back to the sitting-room, she found William sprawled in a rocking-chair, his hat still on the back of his head, his far-away gaze resting on the flame of the lamp, and a fatuous smile of pleased recollection on his face. She went out and shut the door, and went direct to bed, leaving William to come to himself with a start, half-sheepish at being caught in such a manifestation of mood.

She got breakfast in silence the next morning, and they ate it almost in silence, despite William’s gentle, tentative efforts at conversation. Amanda might have responded more naturally if a pink cosmos had not adorned William’s buttonhole, a piece of vanity that seemed to her exponential of his state of mind. Whenever she looked up she saw it, and it irritated her into silence again. All the morning she tried to adjust herself, and to be sure that she was seeing things sensibly. But whenever she began to think she had brought herself to a state of fairness, she found that, after all, she was really putting William on probation in her own mind. What would he do to-day? Would he see Mrs. Jessup?

At noon he was only a few minutes late — not enough either to vindicate or to condemn him. His flower was gone, but that might have withered. Amanda was deeply ashamed at finding herself thinking of the matter. But in spite of her compunctions she could not, even with effort, respond to William’s attempts at talk, and one subject after another dropped heavily, while poor William looked puzzled and nervous. At last, rising to go, he paused with his hand on the door and looked back inquiringly. But all she could say was, ‘What time will you be home to supper?’ — and that without looking up.

‘At six,’ answered William, in a tone that said righteously, ‘Am I not always home at six?’

But Mrs. Jackson said no more and he went out.

All the afternoon she struggled against the notion that six o’clock was to decide something momentous for her. She kept telling herself that there was nothing in the whole affair; but whenever she decided that, she found again at the back of her mind the same uncomfortable expectation as before. The momentary picture of William at the gate last night kept returning to her — a picture that duplicated one which she herself had cherished. She and William had not had a very romantic courtship, but in her sober, reserved way she had stored up some bits of it to keep secretly always. This affair made her feel as if her small sentimental hoard had been pilfered.

She settled down at last to do some hemstitching, but she could not help watching the clock, and she started supper fifteen minutes earlier than usual. It was ready just at six, but she made herself wait a few minutes before she went to the door and looked up the street. William was not in sight. She went back to the kitchen and found a task that occupied a few moments, and then returned to the door. Away up the street William was coming with a lady — a lady who, even at this distance, could be seen to toss her head jauntily and flutter a veil and anon lean toward William; and once she even seemed to put her hand on his arm. Amanda watched them until they disappeared behind the snow-ball bushes and the box-elder tree. Two minutes passed, three minutes, and William did not reappear.

Mrs. Jackson turned abruptly back to the kitchen. It was already seventeen minutes past six. She looked about uncertainly for a moment, then with sudden decision put out. the fire, took a loaf of bread from the breadbox, wrapped it up, and hurried from the house. She had last night promised old Mrs. Black a loaf of salt-rising bread, and this now afforded her an excuse. Yet she could not help, so ingrained were her habits of reasonableness, setting the clock in a conspicuous place in the middle of the kitchen table.

As she went out of the side gate William came into sight along the street. He called to her, but she only turned and looked at him and went on. He stared after her a moment in amazement. The spectacle of a housekeeper — and Amanda of all — leaving her house just at supper-time, was almost astounding. He went on into the house. In the kitchen he saw the clock, but drew no deduction from it, and loitered uneasily about the house waiting for Amanda to return.

Logically, William should have been smitten by this time with a sense of guilt; but in fact he was not at all. He had a sort of consciousness regarding his relations to the sociable widow, partly embarrassment, partly sly pleasure, but no feeling of wickedness lent any spice to it. The only trouble with William was an infection of belated youthfulness. Had he had his fill of flirting at twenty-five, satiety would have kept him from tasting it now. His courtship of Amanda had been a quiet affair, qualified by his commonplaceness and her seriousness. Amanda loved him, to be sure, but it was more exciting to be obviously admired than to be the object of calm affection. A coy, admiring glance between the lashes was more thrilling than practical evidences of sincere esteem. William did not return Mrs. Jessup’s glances, but it gave him a jaunty sense of youthfulness to receive them, and to feel that the book of youth was not quite closed.

There was really very little on his conscience when at last he carefully brought in his own supper from the kitchen, spilling nothing and soiling nothing, and ate it in solitude, still wondering what was the matter with Amanda. He lingered restlessly for a few minutes, and finally went off to the store. When he came back Amanda was in bed, and apparently asleep.

In the morning she seemed to expect that no allusion should be made to her absence, and she sat with her eyes on the coffee-things, and ate little breakfast. William’s impulse was to ask her what was the matter. But by this time it seemed awkward to do so. Moreover, he hardly knew how to begin — he had never before had to inquire into any vagaries in Amanda’s perfectly reasonable temper. He came in at noon with a briskness and jauntiness which he assumed at the gate, and which was intended to ignore existing relations and put things on a new basis. But he found Amanda as immobile as ever. Then he did what he had not had a chance to do in ten years — he sulked. Again they finish the meal in silence.

‘There is just one thing I want to know,’he said with animus as he rose from the table, ‘Will you be here at supper-time?’

Mrs. Jackson turned a steady eye upon him. Yes. I’ll be here at suppertime.’

William blinked, but, gathering up the fag-end of his assertiveness, he added, ‘Because if you won’t, I’ll take supper down at Jones’s restaurant,’and went out and slammed the door.

Mrs. Jackson wished it were not the day of the prayer-meeting. She had never felt less inclined for one in all her life. But she set her parlor in order, and put a fresh embroidered centrepiece on the table, and brought in chairs from the dining-room, and put on a clean shirt-waist. Old Mrs. Black came a half-hour early, and sat and quavered about her neuralgia and the condition of the church and the need of a revival, and Amanda tried hard to give her attention to the talk. Then came Mrs. Carson, and they talked about the prospect of a good attendance, and who could be counted on to come.

‘I wonder if Cora Jessup will be here,’ said Mrs. Black, with a sort of slyness in her tone that brought Mrs. Jackson out of her abstraction, though she could not be sure the old lady meant anything by it.

‘ I think Mrs. Jessup is a good Christian woman,’said Mrs. Carson with sudden sternness. It was her way to be sporadically belligerent, and this time no one inquired what her remark meant.

But Mrs. Jackson wondered, with a new kind of indignation, if anyone else had been noticing. She did not have time to think of it, however, for now more women appeared, — Mrs. Weston bringing with her a clinging odor of peach-pickles, and Mrs. Johnson with a whispered statement that she had bread in the oven and had to go in half an hour. Mrs. Ward had left her baby with a neighbor’s child, and merely took a provisional seat on the edge of a chair near the door. Other women came, and settled themselves with the air of having an hour of recognized duty before them.

The uncomfortable air with which women accept the responsibility of a prayer-meeting was modified when Mrs. Jackson asked Mrs. Black, a veteran in public devotions, to conduct the meeting. They dropped to their knees in some ease of mind as she lifted her voice to pray that those who were set in the watch-tower of Zion might be strengthened, and that there might be a great outpouring of the Spirit on the fields that were ripe for harvest. Then, alternating with some weak hymns, she called on one sister after another to follow her, including Mrs. Clark, who gulped and hesitated, and stammered, ‘Let us repeat the Lord’s Prayer.’

Just before Mrs. Jackson was called on, there were quick steps on the walk, and a rustle and flutter in the hall, and Mrs. Jessup came in, with a great show of making no noise and of implied apology for being late. If Mrs. Jessup had not worn a silk petticoat and tearose perfumery, what followed would not even then have happened. But the swish of her hidden silks as she changed her seat twice before she was settled, called attention loudly to the ginghams and shirt-waists of the other women. And the perfume borne abroad by the flutter of her unnecessary fan seemed to demand a special atmosphere for her. Even her graciousness and the obvious decorousness — and rustle — with which she finally sank to her knees with the others, irritated Mrs. Jackson beyond endurance. When, later, she looked back on the episode, she could not recognize Amanda Jackson in the part she had played.

In Washburn, the accepted style for prayer involved much circumlocution and euphuism. No spade could be prayed for as a spade; it was described in two dependent clauses and three prepositional phrases. A really artistic and professional prayer abounded in definition, and involved the methods of a lexicographer. But when the Conference sent Brother Andrews to the Methodist church, a new thing was heard. He said boldly, ‘Bless John Hunt, who is going to California for little Mary’s health.’ It was a startling thing at first.

Now, impulsively, as Amanda lifted her voice, with the consciousness of Mrs. Jessup kneeling beside her and joining undesired in her petitions, she began to follow Mr. Andrews’s personal methods. She would give Cora Jessup something really to join in on. She began to pray for every one present, calling her by name, but using the accepted language of petition. She prayed for Mrs. Black, that she might bear the afflictions and calamities of age and remain for many years a mother in Israel; she prayed for Mrs. Ward, that she might be enabled to bring up her children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; she prayed for Mrs. Green, who was going to Idaho for her asthma; she zig-zagged round the circle, wherever she found likely objects for petition; and then — she prayed for Mrs. Jessup.

‘O Lord,’ she prayed clearly and calmly, ‘comfort her for the loss of her husband and help her soon to find another. Keep her, in her discontentment with her condition, from wandering from the paths of seemliness and — decency. Let not her vanity be a snare to her. Let her remember that sobriety and modesty are counted unto a woman for righteousness. May she be, as widows in the church should, an example to the younger women of the flock. Keep her, we beseech Thee, — a — respectable.’

Amanda’s vocabulary was at fault. She would not have said respectable and decency if she had had time to think of other words. But having launched them, she hurried to the end with a few general petitions.

She had scarcely paused on the ‘Amen,’ and the women — whose ears were now accustomed to the sound of the familiar petitions and who, feeling that the end of the meeting was near, wore only half listening — were just raising their heads, when Mrs. Jessup’s high tense voice broke in. The women dropped their heads again, settled down a little more on their knees, and Mrs. Jessup prayed. Mrs. Jessup was a little at a disadvantage, in that the long-established phrases of devotion did not come to her lips so readily as to Amanda’s, and she lapsed occasionally into her natural locutions. But she rushed into the usual introductory petitions and then, after thus paying her respects to custom, she promptly reached ‘the sister in whose house we are meeting,’ for whom she prayed sweetly, in fervent tones. And then she prayed for — William.

In the tone of one battering the throne with petitions, she entreated that his wife be given grace to bear the peculiar trials of her lot, the foolishness and vanity of her partner, and his wandering eye. ‘Give her and others,’ she begged, ‘patience to stand this nonsense. May he see the error of his ways, and not make himself a show to the whole towm. Keep him respectable, and let him not try to imitate people so much younger than himself. Keep him from behaving so light and silly, and bothering other people that he is boring to death — ’

Mrs. Jackson rose abruptly from her knees and sat up on her chair. Mrs. Brown, who was looking inattentively through her fingers at the pattern of Mrs. Carson’s embroidered bag, lying on the floor beside her, and Mrs. Ward, who had been fancying she heard her baby cry, and Mrs. Black who was deaf, were all aware of a movement, and also rose automatically and took their seats, looking blankly round. The other women retained their devotional positions, but, hearing the stir, raised their heads to look inquiringly over their shoulders. Mrs. Jessup, aware of a rustle behind her and not sure what it meant, closed with a hurried ‘and Thine shall be the glory,’ and rose to her feet.

What would have happened next no one knows, for at that moment Mrs. Ward’s neighbor’s little girl came dashing up to the window, flattened her nose against the wire screen and gasped, ‘Oh, Miss Ward, come quick! The baby ’s swallowed a button off of his cloak, whole!'

Mrs. Ward rushed away precipitately, followed by Mrs. Green, and the meeting broke up abruptly. Mrs. Jackson’s glance did not meet Mrs. Jessup’s in the leave-taking.

William came home that night at two minutes past six — the two minutes a matter of intention. Supper was not quite ready, but Amanda was hurrying busily about, making muffins and creamed chicken, a combination William loved. It did not lie in Amanda to make a demonstration or to explain things, but he at once recognized a change of atmosphere.

‘Can I do anything?’ he asked affably.

‘Yes — if you don’t mind — gel some fresh water and bring in that pitcher of cream from the ice-box.’

Amanda’s tone was perfectly natural.

William checked a sigh of relief as he sat down to the table. But he did not mention that Mrs. Jessup had been on her porch as he passed, and that at sight of him she had merely nodded and had gone into the house and shut the door.