"God's purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour.
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower!"
sang the choir of the Innisfield Presbyterian Church one Sunday morning a month later. And Miss Philura Rice—as was afterward remarked—sang the words with such enthusiasm and earnestness that her high soprano soared quite above all the other voices in the choir, and this despite the fact that Miss Electa Pratt was putting forth her nasal contralto with more than wonted insistence.
The last-mentioned lady found the sermon—on the text, "Little children, love one another, for love is of God"—so extremely convincing, and her own subsequent spiritual state in such an agitated condition, that she took occasion to seek a private conversation with her pastor in his study on that same Sunday afternoon.
"I don't know when I've been so wrought up!" declared Miss Pratt, with a preliminary display of immaculate handkerchief. "I cried and cried after I got home from church this morning. Ma she sez to me, sez she, 'What ails you Lecty?' And I sez to ma, sez I, 'Ma, it was that blessed sermon. I don't know when I ever heard anything like it! That dear pastor of ours is just ripening for a better world!'" Miss Electa paused a moment to shed copious tears over this statement. "It does seem to me, dear Mr. Pettibone," she resumed, with a tender glance and a comprehensive sniff, "that you ain't looking as well as usual. I said so to Philura Rice as we was coming out of church, and I really hate to tell you how she answered me; only I feel as though it was my duty. 'Mr. Pettibone is perfectly well!' she says, and tossed those feathers of hers higher'n ever. Philura's awful worldly, I do grieve to say—if not worse. I've been a-thinking for some time that it was my Christian duty (however painful) to tell you what Mis' Van Deuser, of Boston, said about——"
The Rev. Silas Pettibone frowned with awful dignity. He brought down his closed fist upon his open Bible with forensic force and suddenness. "Miss Philura Rice," he said emphatically, "is one of the most spiritual—the most lovely and consistent—Christian characters it has ever been my privilege to know. Her faith and unworldliness are absolutely beyond the comprehension of—of—many of my flock. I must further tell you that I hope to have the great happiness of leading Miss Rice to the matrimonial altar in the near future."
Miss Electa Pratt sank back in her chair petrified with astonishment. "Well, I must say!" she gasped. "And she was engaged to you all this time and I never knew it!"
The Rev. Pettibone bent his eyes coldly upon his agitated parishioner. "I am at a loss to comprehend your very strange comment, Miss Pratt," he said; "the engagement has been of such very short duration that I can not regard it as surprising that you should not have heard of it. It—ah—took place only yesterday."
Miss Electa straightened her angular shoulders with a jerk. "Yesterday!" she almost screamed. "Well! I can tell you that Philura Rice told me that she was engaged to be married more than three months ago!"
"You are certainly mistaken, madam," began the minister in a somewhat perturbed tone, which did not escape the notice of the now flushed and triumphant spinster.