CHAPTER XVI
SANCTUARY
While these events had been taking place the members of the Coral Strand Missionary Circle were gathered at the church in solemn conclave. Mrs. Westfall, the president, had called a special meeting to deal with events of unusual importance that had brought out the entire membership.
The circle had lately been the object of a cowardly attack from the pen of one Bill Busby, who devoted nearly a column of the valued editorial space of the Citizen to a whimsical commentary on foreign missions. Of course he had mentioned no names, but his poison-tipped innuendoes were too pointed to be overlooked.
On behalf of the Coral Strand Missionary Circle Mrs. Westfall had demanded a retraction of the alleged libelous statements, and an apology that should be given the same publicity as the defamatory matter.
Bill Busby had received her with extreme politeness. He had transferred his feet from the top of the desk to the seat of a chair; he had advanced his hat to the forward portion of his head; he had even gone so far as to remove his cigar from his mouth and lay it on the edge of the desk which already bore charred evidence of previous courtesies; but he refused to retract his statements. On the contrary he insisted that they were true. However, he had agreed to apologize, which he did in the next week's issue.
But Bill's apology was somewhat awkward. It appeared under the caption, Well-meaning but Mis-informed and Misguided Philanthropists, and sounded very much like betting the Coral Strand Missionary Circle a new hat that the $160 they had raised during the preceding year would have shriveled by the time it reached its destination until it would buy no more than $1.60 worth of shoes for the naked heathen babies.
The special meeting followed; for, regardless of the truth or falsity of Bill's charges, the cause of foreign missions had received a body-blow. The community—never over-enthusiastic on the subject—was now equipped with a full-fledged excuse for refusing to make any further contributions. A flimsy excuse, to be sure, but the flimsier an excuse is, the better it serves its purpose.
It soon proved to be the sense of the meeting that something of a public nature must be done to recover the lost prestige of the Coral Strand Missionary Circle, and to counteract the insidious effects of "that Busby man's dastardly attack on the fair name and fame of the circle."