It was a religious meeting of some sort, right there in the heart of the city!
She pressed in at last where she could stand behind the last row of chairs next to the aisle and see the platform. A piano was there and a girl playing the hymn. A young man was playing on a cornet, and there were singers and some men seated in chairs behind a low desk table.
She forgot that she was missing her train in her deep interest in the meeting, and her own voice joined eagerly in the old hymn she had known ever since she could remember:
“Now we are free—there’s no condemnation,
Jesus provides a perfect salvation:
‘Come unto me,’ oh, hear His sweet call,
Come, and He saves us, once for all.”
Her eyes swept over the congregation. Men and women and children were there, people of plain dress, mostly, some young giddy children of the street, some old men in worn garments, a few tired-looking women, not many mighty. Back by the door, caught as herself in the storm were a few better-dressed people, in luxurious furs and velvets, people obviously amused at their surroundings, as they would have been equally amused if they had dropped into an opium joint for the moment, or a travelling circus, or a Hindoo temple, or any other alien environment.
But Joyce felt that she had dropped in on home and her heart went out in the song:
“‘Children of God,’ oh, glorious calling,