“They must be there,” said Miss Barry, “and—and—we must set a trap for them.”
“A trap?”
“I’ll ask my uncle to help the choir sing, and—of course, he wont refuse. I don’t suppose he cares to come to the meeting because he needs it, but if others go he won’t want to be left out, and if he can sing, that will give him a chance to attend. He is my uncle, you know.”
The “trap” for Dr. Tilton worked successfully. He scorned the idea that he might need the meeting. This he said to himself. However, he would help the choir sing, he said, to his niece. But a trap for Will Somers! Who could make that?
“Won’t you come to the meeting to hear us sing?” asked Charlie, with a sad face.
“O, you don’t want me, Charlie,” replied Will. “O, I can’t go.”
Aunt Stanshy made no remark. She sat silently, busily thinking, while Charlie and Will talked about the meeting. Aunt Stanshy was making a “trap.”
The day before that appointed for the temperance meeting, she went to her pastor.
“Mr. Walton, the meeting will begin at half past seven. If—if—say about quarter after seven—you should let Charlie and the other boys go down to the church door and sing one or two of their pieces, it might draw folks in.”
“Why, that’s a good idea, and I wish you would ask them.”