“Auntie, do you expect to hear anything new?”
“Judging from your diagnosis of Dr. Bland,—no.”
“To be edified, refreshed, strengthened, or instructed?”
“Perhaps not.”
“Bored, then?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you expect?”
“There are the prayers and singing. Generally one can, if one tries, wring a little devotion from the worst of them. As to a minister, if he is good and commonplace, young and earnest and ignorant, and I, whom he cannot help one step on the way to Heaven, consequently stay at home, Deacon Quirk, whom he might carry a mile or two, by and by stays at home also. If there is to be a ‘building fitly joined together,’ each stone must do its part of the upholding. I feel better to go half a day always. I never compel Faith to go, but I never have a chance, for she teases not to be left at home.”
“I think it’s splendid to go to church most the time,” put in Faith, who was squatted on the carpet, counting sugared caraway seeds,—“all but the sermon. That isn’t splendid. I don’t like the gre-at big prayers ’n’ things, I like caramary seeds, though; mother always gives ’em to me in meeting ’cause I’m a good girl. Don’t you wish you were a good girl, Cousin Mary, so’s you could have some? Besides, I’ve got on my best hat and my button-boots. Besides, there used to be a real funny little boy up in meeting at home, and he gave me a little tin dorg once over the top the pew. Only mother made me give it back. O, you ought to seen the man that preached down at Uncle Calvin’s! I tell you he was a bully old minister,—he banged the Bible like everything!”
“There’s a devotional spirit for you!” I said to her mother.