"You don't mean to say you sing that in church?" cried Helen. "Where do you go?"
"Why, I go to your church," said the still injured Alfaretta,—"to Mr. Ward's. We're to have that hymn on Sabbath"—
"Oh, there must be some mistake," remonstrated Helen. "I'm sure Mr. Ward did not notice that verse."
"But it's all like that; it says"—
"Don't tell me any more," Helen said. "I've heard enough. I had no idea such awful words were written." Then she stopped abruptly, feeling her position as the preacher's wife in a way of which she had never thought.
Alfaretta's father was an elder in John's church, which gave her a certain ease in speaking to her mistress that did not mean the slightest disrespect.
"Is it the words of it you don't like?" said Alfaretta, rather relieved, since her singing had not been criticised.
"Yes," Helen answered, "it is the words. Don't you see how dreadful they are?"
Alfaretta stood with her plump red hands on her hips, and regarded Mrs. Ward with interest. "I hadn't ever thought of 'em," she said. "Yes, ma'am. I suppose they are awful bad," and swinging back and forth on her heels, her eyes fixed meditatively on the ceiling, she said,—
"'Then swift and dreadful she descends
Down to the fiery coast,
Amongst abominable fiends'—