The Old Peabody Pew: A Christmas Romance of a Country Church. Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith

suggestion of altering the pitch was received with applause at the moment, subsequent study of the situation proved that such a proceeding was entirely beyond the modest means of the society.  Then there arose an ingenious and militant carpenter in a neighbouring village, who asserted that he would shingle the meeting-house roof for such and such a sum, and agree to drink every drop of water that would leak in afterward.  This was felt by all parties to be a promise attended by extraordinary risks, but it was accepted nevertheless, Miss Lobelia Brewster remarking that the rash carpenter, being already married, could not marry a Dorcas anyway, and even if he died, he was not a resident of Edgewood, and therefore could be more easily spared, and that it would be rather exciting, just for a change, to see a man drink himself to death with rain-water.  The expected tragedy never occurred, however, and the inspired shingler fulfilled his promise to the letter, so that before many months the Dorcas Society proceeded, with incredible exertion, to earn more money, and the interior of the church was neatly painted and made as fresh as a rose.  With no smoke, no rain, no snow nor melting ice to defile it, the good old landmark that had been pointing its finger Heavenward for over a century would now be clean and fragrant for years to come, and the weary sisters leaned back in their respective rocking-chairs and drew deep breaths of satisfaction.

      These breaths continued to be drawn throughout an unusually arduous haying season; until, in fact, a visitor from a neighbouring city was heard to remark that the Tory Hill Meeting-House would be one of the best preserved and pleasantest churches in the whole State of Maine, if only it were suitably carpeted.

      This thought had secretly occurred to many a Dorcas in her hours of pie-making, preserving, or cradle-rocking, but had been promptly extinguished as flagrantly extravagant and altogether impossible.  Now that it had been openly mentioned, the contagion of the idea spread, and in a month every sort of honest machinery for the increase of funds had been set in motion: harvest suppers, pie sociables, old folk’s concerts, apron sales, and, as a last resort, a subscription paper, for the church floor measured hundreds of square yards, and the carpet committee announce that a good ingrain could not be purchased, even with the church discount, for less than ninety-seven cents a yard.

      The Dorcases took out their pencils, and when they multiplied the surface of the floor by the price of the carpet per yard, each Dorcas attaining a result entirely different from all the others, there was a shriek of dismay, especially from the secretary, who had included in her mathematical operation certain figures in her possession representing the cubical contents of the church and the offending pitch of the roof, thereby obtaining a product that would have dismayed a Croesus.  Time sped and efforts increased, but the Dorcases were at length obliged to clip the wings of their desire and content themselves with carpeting the pulpit and pulpit steps, the choir, and the two aisles, leaving the floor in the pews until some future year.

      How the women cut and contrived and matched that hardly-bought red ingrain carpet, in the short December afternoons that ensued after its purchase; so that, having failed to be ready for Thanksgiving, it could be finished for the Christmas festivities!

      They were sewing in the church, and as the last stitches were being taken, Maria Sharp suddenly ejaculated in her impulsive fashion:—

      “Wouldn’t it have been just perfect if we could have had the pews repainted before we laid the new carpet!”

      “It would, indeed,” the president answered; “but it will take us all winter to pay for the present improvements, without any thought of fresh paint.  If only we had a few more men-folks to help along!”

      “Or else none at all!” was Lobelia Brewster’s suggestion.  “It’s havin’ so few that keeps us all stirred up.  If there wa’n’t any anywheres, we’d have women deacons and carpenters and painters, and get along first rate; for somehow the supply o’ women always holds out, same as it does with caterpillars an’ flies an’ grasshoppers!”

      Everybody laughed, although Maria Sharp asserted that she for one was not willing to be called a caterpillar simply because there were too many women in the universe.

      “I never noticed before how shabby and scarred and dirty the pews are,” said the minister’s wife as she looked at them reflectively.

      “I’ve been thinking all the afternoon of the story about the poor old woman and the lily,” and Nancy Wentworth’s clear voice broke into the discussion.  “Do you remember some one gave her a stalk of Easter lilies and she set them in a glass pitcher on the kitchen table?  After looking at them for a few minutes, she got up from her chair and washed the pitcher until the glass shone.  Sitting down again, she glanced at the little window.  It would never do; she had forgotten how dusty and blurred it was, and she took her cloth and burnished the panes.  Then she scoured the table, then the floor, then blackened the stove before she sat down to her knitting.  And of course the lily had done it all, just by showing, in its whiteness, how grimy everything else was.”

      The minister’s wife who had been in Edgewood only a few months, looked admiringly at Nancy’s bright face, wondering that five-and-thirty years of life, including ten of school-teaching, had done so little to mar its serenity.  “The lily story is as true as the gospel!” she exclaimed, “and I can see how one thing has led you to another in making the church comfortable.  But my husband says that two coats of paint on the pews would cost a considerable sum.”

      “How about cleaning them?  I don’t believe they’ve had a good hard washing since the flood.”  The suggestion came from Deacon Miller’s wife to the president.

      “They can’t even be scrubbed for less than fifteen or twenty dollars, for I thought of that and asked Mrs. Simpson yesterday, and she said twenty cents a pew was the cheapest she could do it for.”

      “We’ve done everything else,” said Nancy Wentworth, with a twitch of her thread; “why don’t we scrub the pews?  There’s nothing in the orthodox creed to forbid, is there?”

      “Speakin’ o’ creeds,” and here old Mrs. Sargent paused in 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