“Not intense enough, Carin would say.”
“That’s it. Yes, let’s go to prayer meeting. I’ll ask father if I may.”
They presently were on their way, walking briskly because they were late. The little Methodist church was full of the old friends of Elder Mills, who as he stood before them, his white hair hanging around his shoulders, his face haggard with pain, yet had a look in his eyes of exaltation and joy which seemed to make a light thing of his physical distress.
“Oh, I want you to love one another,” he said during the evening. “I want you to forgive one another. Be honest, be brave in saying what you think, live truly, avoid lies. Above everything, avoid lies—in word and in act.”
“For goodness sake,” thought Annie Laurie, “Can’t preachers find anything else to talk about but lies? Whether I go to my own church or another, that seems to be the theme.” She remembered how she had caught Sam Disbrow’s eye that day at the Baptist church when the minister had been talking about lies, and how queer it had been to realize that she was reading Sam’s mind, and could tell that he, like herself, was wondering why the preacher kept harping on that. Annie Laurie’s mind drifted off to Sam’s home—to his mother who never was well, to their untidy little house, and to his cross-eyed sister, who never would make friends with anybody. Sam seemed so different from the rest of the family, with his hearty downright ways, his energy, his determination to make something of himself.
Was meeting over? She aroused herself as from a dream.
“There’s to be a business meeting,” Azalea said to her as the people arose. “They’re to talk about who is to be our new minister. Since it is not conference time, we are to ask for some one we want, and then if the bishop thinks best we can have him.”
“I see,” said Annie Laurie vaguely. Though she did not really see.
The two girls started out together, crowding softly by their elders who were gathered about in the aisles talking over the trial that had come to the church in losing Elder Mills, and in being obliged to bring a new minister in at the middle of the session. And then, suddenly, a beautiful idea came to Azalea. Why couldn’t they ask the Rev. Absalom Summers? He was in that tiny backwoods village where there were so few to hear or enjoy him; and he was such a wonderful man, all wrapped up in his religion, and talking about it as if it must be the business of everyone. And if he came, her “pretend cousin” Barbara, his wife, would come also, and that blessed baby, Jonathan. To think was to act with Azalea, now as always. She broke from Annie Laurie and ran up to her old friend and protector, Haystack Thompson.
“Oh, Mr. Thompson, dear,” she whispered, “if only you could manage to put in a word for Mr. Summers! You know what he is—how he talks and sings and laughs and keeps everybody stirred up. He’d put life into any church, wouldn’t he? He’s just wasted down in that little valley where he lives. Hardly anybody comes to church, and those who do, don’t like him. They think he’s too new-fashioned. But here he’d be appreciated.”