“I do not see that, Elizabeth. We are told not ‘to pass the time,’ but to ‘redeem’ it. I think dancing a foolish thing, and folly and sin are very close kin.”
“You said ‘unwomanly’ also?”
“Yes; I think dancing is unwomanly in public. If you waltz with Lord Francis Eltham, you permit him to take a liberty with you in public you would not allow under any other circumstances. And then just look at dancers! How heated, flushed, damp, and untidy they look after the exercise! Did you ever watch a lot of men and women dancing when you could not hear the music, but could only see them bobbing up and down the room? I assure you they look just like a party of lunatics.”
Elizabeth laughed; but Phyllis kept her resolution. And after the ball was over, Elizabeth said, frankly, “You had the best of it, Phyllis, every way. You looked so cool and sweet and calm in the midst of the confusion and heat. I declare every one was glad to sit down beside you, and look at you. And how cheerfully you sang and played! You did not dance, but, nevertheless, you were the belle of the ball.”
On the first Sabbath of the new year Phyllis was left at the little Methodist chapel. Her profession had always been free from that obtrusive demonstration of religious opinion which is seldom united with true piety. While she dwelt under her uncle’s roof it had seemed generally the wisest and kindest thing to worship with his family. It involved nothing that hurt her conscience, and it prevented many disputes which would probably have begun in some small household disarrangement, and bred only dislike and religious offense. Her Methodism had neither been cowardly nor demonstrative, but had been made most conscious to all by her sweet complaisance and charitable concessions.
So, when she said to the squire, “Uncle, Mr. North tells me there is to be a very solemn Methodist service to-morrow, and one which I never saw in America; I should like you to leave me at the chapel,” he answered: “To be sure, Phyllis. We would go with thee, but there’s none but members admitted. I know what service thou means well enough.”
She found in the chapel about two hundred men and women, for they had come to Hallam from the smaller societies around. They were mostly from what is often called “the lower orders,” men and women whose hands were hard with toil, and whose forms were bowed with labor. But what a still solemnity there was in the place! No organ, no dim religious light, no vergers, or beadles, or robed choristers, or priest in sacred vestments. The winter light fell pale and cold through the plain windows on bare white-washed walls, on a raised wooden pulpit, and on pews unpainted and uncushioned. Some of the congregation were very old; some, just in the flush of manhood and womanhood. All were in the immediate presence of God, and were intensely conscious of it. There was a solemn hymn sung and a short prayer; then Mr. North’s gaze wandered over the congregation until it rested upon a man in the center—a very old man—with hair as white as wool.
“Stephen Langside, can you stand up before God and man to-day?”
The old man rose, and, supported by two young farmers, lifted-up a face full of light and confidence.
“They tell me that you are ninety-eight years old, and that this is the seventy-first time that you will renew your covenant with the eternal Father. Bear witness this day of him.”