“No. I am going to pay money for it—good money—but I am going to have it!”
In all their life together he had never seen her like this. He watched her with fascinated eyes. Going to the mantel, she took down a box with a slit in the top. It was their missionary bank and was held as sacred from profaning touch as the ark of the Lord. She was tearing it open.
“Mary!” he cried, aghast. “Not the missionary money! You wouldn’t take that! ‘Will a man rob God?’”
“I’d rob anybody!” she said, turning upon him like a lioness defending her young. “I’m going to have a Christmas for my children with candy in it if the heathen go—to perdition!”
He saw then that she was past talking to.
II
It was about two weeks after this that the pastor of the First Church called a meeting of the ladies of the congregation to take action about a missionary box.
“Another!” groaned several ladies who never contributed.
He went on to explain that a barrel sent from the church a few weeks before had been returned, and then—not scorning to make appeal to any God-given attribute of the female mind—added: “Perhaps I should say that this barrel has been not only returned but refused. Since it was sent from the church it is a matter in which you are all interested. The president of the Missionary Society requests a full attendance.”
Naturally she got it. Seldom in the annals of the First Church had there been such a meeting.