"If your boys are like mine, they won't get any harm from a sermon. I do manage to drag them to church, but it is like taking a horse to water—it is another matter to make them listen."
Mrs. Molesworth returned home feeling that Mary Parton treated serious subjects with undue levity. Mrs. Parton, seeing Miss Betty Bishop approaching, lingered at the gate.
"Well, Betty, I suppose you know we are to have Dr. Hollingsworth at our church Sunday."
She had heard it, but did not seem disposed to enlarge upon it, as was her custom with a piece of news.
"Cornelia Molesworth is worrying because she has heard he is not orthodox."
"She is not obliged to hear him, is she? Nobody can amount to anything nowadays without being accused of heresy; however, I fancy Dr. Hollingsworth can bear up under Mrs. Molesworth's disapproval."
Mrs. Parton surveyed Miss Betty with a twinkle in her eye. "I declare, Betty," she remarked, irrelevantly, "you are growing younger. You look nearer twenty than forty this minute."
"Perhaps it is my new hat," Miss Betty suggested; but surely she had passed the age when one flushes over the possession of a becoming hat.
Mrs. Parton laughed to herself as she went back to the house, "Do you suppose that is why he is coming? Goodness! I wish the colonel was here."
The news was discussed all over town that Monday morning.