"You don't mean to say that they gave you hot baked potatoes with butter in meeting, and that was the way you kept warm?"
"Oh, we didn't eat them!" interrupted Mrs. "Judge." "We held them in our hands, or put them to our feet. But the little stoves were better. And then finally we had stoves, big stoves, in the meeting-house. I thought I should faint dead away when they first used them. It seemed to me so hot and stuffy in the room. And then I remember that my husband laughed at me when I drove home (I always had to ride, child; I wasn't able to walk so far for many years); for he said there hadn't been any fires kindled yet in the new stoves. But I got used to them after a time, and they were real comfortable. But I should certainly faint away to see the heat coming right up out of the floor, and think that underneath me was a raging fire."
"Why that's the way we warm the parsonage," said Ruth. "Didn't you see the registers?"
"Have you got one of those fires in the cellar?" asked Mrs. "Judge."
"Dear me, Judge, I shall never feel safe again so long as we hang on the east parlor wall. Why, we shall be liable to burn up any moment. Think of having one of those awful things, full of fire, right under your feet. I'm so sorry that I know anything about it."
"Oh, you'll get used to it! You have got used to it, haven't you? There has been a furnace in the parsonage ever so many years." They were all seated in the minister's pew in church at this time. The Judge was bowed in thought.
"He looks as if he was going to pray," whispered Ruth, somewhat awe-struck by his expression and the stillness of the place as well as the solemnity of the occasion. But it was hard for her to keep from asking questions. "Did you see the man in the moon as we came into church?" she turned to Mrs. "Judge."
"The man in the moon!" exclaimed the lady; "he's the very person that I want to speak to. I think it's years since I've seen him."
"Well, he's out to-night in great style. It must be because it's Christmas Eve. Did you hang up your stocking when you were a little girl?"
"Do what?" inquired the lady.