her work, “Elder Ransom from Acreville stopped with us last night, an’ he tells me they recite the Euthanasian Creed every few Sundays in the Episcopal Church.  I didn’t want him to know how ignorant I was, but I looked up the word in the dictionary.  It means easy death, and I can’t see any sense in that, though it’s a terrible long creed, the Elder says, an’ if it’s any longer ’n ourn, I should think anybody might easy die learnin’ it!”

“I think the word is Athanasian,” ventured the minister’s wife.

“Elder Ransom’s always plumb full o’ doctrine,” asserted Miss Brewster, pursuing the subject.  “For my part, I’m glad he preferred Acreville to our place.  He was so busy bein’ a minister, he never got round to bein’ a human creeter.  When he used to come to sociables and picnics, always lookin’ kind o’ like the potato blight, I used to think how complete he’d be if he had a foldin’ pulpit under his coat tails; they make foldin’ beds nowadays, an’ I s’pose they could make foldin’ pulpits, if there was a call.”

“Land sakes, I hope there won’t be!” exclaimed Mrs. Sargent.  “An’ the Elder never said much of anything either, though he was always preachin’!  Now your husband, Mis’ Baxter, always has plenty to say after you think he’s all through.  There’s water in his well when the others is all dry!”

“But how about the pews?” interrupted Mrs. Burbank.  “I think Nancy’s idea is splendid, and I want to see it carried out.  We might make it a picnic, bring our luncheons, and work all together; let every woman in the congregation come and scrub her own pew.”

“Some are too old, others live at too great a distance,” and the minister’s wife sighed a little; “indeed, most of those who once owned the pews or sat in them seemed to be dead, or gone away to live in busier places.”

“I’ve no patience with ’em, gallivantin’ over the earth,” and here Lobelia rose and shook the carpet threads from her lap.  “I shouldn’t want to live in a livelier place than Edgewood, seem’s though!  We wash and hang out Mondays, iron Tuesdays, cook Wednesdays, clean house and mend Thursdays and Fridays, bake Saturdays, and go to meetin’ Sundays.  I don’t hardly see how they can do any more ’n that in Chicago!”

“Never mind if we have lost members!” said the indomitable Mrs. Burbank.  “The members we still have left must work all the harder.  We’ll each clean our own pew, then take a few of our neighbours’, and then hire Mrs. Simpson to do the wainscoting and floor.  Can we scrub Friday and lay the carpet Saturday?  My husband and Deacon Miller can help us at the end of the week.  All in favour manifest it by the usual sign.  Contrary minded?  It is a vote.”

There never were any contrary minded when Mrs. Jere Burbank was in the chair.  Public sentiment in Edgewood was swayed by the Dorcas Society, but Mrs. Burbank swayed the Dorcases themselves as the wind sways the wheat.

CHAPTER II

The old Meeting House wore an animated aspect when the eventful Friday came, a cold, brilliant, sparkling December day, with good sleighing, and with energy in every breath that swept over the dazzling snowfields.  The sexton had built a fire in the furnace on the way to his morning work—a fire so economically contrived that it would last exactly the four or five necessary hours, and not a second more.  At eleven o’clock all the pillars of the society had assembled, having finished their own household work and laid out on their respective kitchen tables comfortable luncheons for the men of the family, if they were fortunate enough to number any among their luxuries.  Water was heated upon oil-stoves set about here and there, and there was a brave array of scrubbing-brushes, cloths, soap, and even sand and soda, for it had been decided and manifested-by-the-usual-sign-and-no-contrary-minded-and-it-was-a-vote that the dirt was to come off, whether the paint came with it or not.  Each of the fifteen women present selected a block of seats, preferably one in which her own was situated, and all fell busily to work.

“There is nobody here to clean the right-wing pews,” said Nancy Wentworth, “so I will take those for my share.”

“You’re not making a very wise choice, Nancy,” and the minister’s wife smiled as she spoke.  “The infant class of the Sunday-school sits there, you know, and I expect the paint has had extra wear and tear.  Families don’t seem to occupy those pews regularly nowadays.”

“I can remember when every seat in the whole church was filled, wings an’ all,” mused Mrs. Sargent, wringing out her wascloth in a reminiscent mood.  “The one in front o’ you, Nancy, was always called the ‘deef pew’ in the old times, and all the folks that was hard o’ hearin’ used to congregate there.”

“The next pew hasn’t been occupied since I came here,” said the minister’s wife.

“No,” answered Mrs. Sargent, glad of any opportunity to retail neighbourhood news.  “’Squire Bean’s folks have moved to Portland to be with the married daughter.  Somebody has to stay with her, and her husband won’t.  The ’Squire ain’t a strong man, and he’s most too old to go to meetin’ now.  The youngest son has just died in New York, so I hear.”

“What ailed him?” inquired Maria Sharp.

“I guess he was completely wore out takin’ care of his health,” returned Mrs. Sargent.  “He had a splendid constitution from a boy, but he was always afraid it wouldn’t last him.—The seat back o’ ’Squire Bean’s is the old Peabody pew—ain’t that the Peabody pew you’re scrubbin’, Nancy?”

“I believe so,” Nancy answered, never pausing in her labours.  “It’s so long since anybody sat there, it’s hard to remember.”

“It is the Peabodys’, I know it, because the aisle runs right up facin’ it.  I can see old Deacon Peabody settin’ in this end same as if ’twas yesterday.”

“He had died before Jere and I came back here to live,” said Mrs. Burbank.  “The first I remember, Justin Peabody sat in the end seat; the sister that died, next, and in the corner, against the wall, Mrs. Peabody, with a crêpe shawl and a palm-leaf fan.  They were a handsome family.  You used to sit with them sometimes, Nancy; Esther was great friends with you.”

“Yes, she was,” Nancy replied, lifting the tattered cushion from its place and brushing it; “and I with her.—What is the use of scrubbing and carpeting, when there are only twenty pew-cushions and six hassocks in the whole church, and most of them ragged?  How can I ever mend this?”

“I shouldn’t trouble myself to darn other people’s cushions!”

This unchristian sentiment came in Mrs. Miller’s ringing tones from the rear of the church.

“I don’t know why,” argued Maria Sharp.  “I’m going to mend my Aunt Achsa’s cushion, and we haven’t spoken for years; but hers is the next pew to mine, and I’m going to have my part of the church look decent, even if she is too stingy to do her share.  Besides, there aren’t any Peabodys left to do their own darning, and Nancy was friends with Esther.”

“Yes, it’s nothing more than right,” Nancy replied, with a note of relief in her voice, “considering Esther.”

“Though he don’t belong to the scrubbin’ sex, there is one Peabody alive, as you know, if you stop to think, Maria; for Justin’s alive, and livin’ out West somewheres.  At least, he’s as much alive as ever he was; he was as good as dead when he was twenty-one, but his mother was always too soft-hearted to bury him.”

There was considerable laughter over this sally of the outspoken Mrs. Sargent, whose keen wit was the delight of the neighbourhood.

“I know he’s alive and doing business in Detroit, for I got his address a week or ten days ago, and wrote, asking him