“She’s coming here,” whispered Felicity in horror. “Can’t we spread out and make her think the pew is full?”
But the manoeuvre was too late. The only result was that Felicity and the Story Girl in moving over left a vacant space between them and Peg promptly plumped down in it.
“Well, I’m here,” she remarked aloud. “I did say once I’d never darken the door of Carlisle church again, but what that boy there”—nodding at Peter—“said last winter set me thinking, and I concluded maybe I’d better come once in a while, to be on the safe side.”
Those poor girls were in an agony. Everybody in the church was looking at our pew and smiling. We all felt that we were terribly disgraced; but we could do nothing. Peg was enjoying herself hugely, beyond all doubt. From where she sat she could see the whole church, including pulpit and gallery, and her black eyes darted over it with restless glances.
“Bless me, there’s Sam Kinnaird,” she exclaimed, still aloud. “He’s the man that dunned Jacob Marr for four cents on the church steps one Sunday. I heard him. ‘I think, Jacob, you owe me four cents on that cow you bought last fall. Rec’llect you couldn’t make the change?’ Well, you know, ‘twould a-made a cat laugh. The Kinnairds were all mighty close, I can tell you. That’s how they got rich.”
What Sam Kinnaird felt or thought during this speech, which everyone in the church must have heard, I know not. Gossip had it that he changed colour. We wretched occupants of the King pew were concerned only with our own outraged feelings.
“And there’s Melita Ross,” went on Peg. “She’s got the same bonnet on she had last time I was in Carlisle church six years ago. Some folks has the knack of making things last. But look at the style Mrs. Elmer Brewer wears, will yez? Yez wouldn’t think her mother died in the poor-house, would yez, now?”
Poor Mrs. Brewer! From the tip of her smart kid shoes to the dainty cluster of ostrich tips in her bonnet—she was most immaculately and handsomely arrayed; but I venture to think she could have taken small pleasure in her fashionable attire that evening. Some of the unregenerate, including Dan, were shaking with suppressed laughter, but most of the people looked as if they were afraid to smile, lest their turn should come next.
“There’s old Stephen Grant coming in,” exclaimed Peg viciously, shaking her floury fist at him, “and looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He may be an elder, but he’s a scoundrel just the same. He set fire to his house to get the insurance and then blamed ME for doing it. But I got even with him for it. Oh, yes! He knows that, and so do I! He, he!”
Peg chuckled quite fiendishly and Stephen Grant tried to look as if nothing had been said.