Nancy never fluttered an eyelash, but sat quietly by Justin’s side with her bosom rising and falling under the beaver fur and her cold hands clasped tight in the little brown muff. Far from grudging this appreciable part of their slender resources, she thrilled with pride to see Justin’s offering fall in the plate.
Justin was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice anything, but his munificent contribution had a most unexpected effect upon his reputation, after all; for on that day, and on many another later one, when his sudden marriage and departure with Nancy Wentworth were under discussion, the neighbours said to one another:—
“Justin must be making money fast out West! He put ten dollars in the contribution plate a-Sunday, and paid the minister ten more next day for marryin’ him to Nancy; so the Peabody luck has turned at last!” which, as a matter of fact, it had.
“And all the time,” said the chairman of the carpet committee to the treasurer of the Dorcas Society—“all the time, little as she realized it, Nancy was laying the carpet in her own pew. Now she’s married to Justin she’ll be the makin’ of him, or I miss my guess. You can’t do a thing with men folks without they’re right alongside where you can keep your eye and hand on ’em. Justin’s handsome and good and stiddy; all he need is some nice woman to put starch into him. The Edgewood Peabodys never had a mite o’ stiffenin’ in ’em,—limp as dishrags, every blessed one! Nancy Wentworth fairly rustles with starch. Justin hadn’t been engaged to her but a few hours when they walked up the aisle together, but did you notice the way he carried his head? I declare I thought ’t would fall off behind! I shouldn’t wonder a mite but they prospered and come back every summer to set in the old Peabody Pew.”