"They stay until near morning, and dress, and gossip, and giggle, and dance; if that is sustaining the church, the less it is sustained the better, according to my notion."
Then Louise—
"May not part of the trouble be that those who do not approve of such management stand aloof and let Satan manage it his own way, and lead the young people whither he will?"
"Humph!" said Farmer Morgan (and there is hardly in our language one syllable more expressive than that in the mouths of some people). "The minister goes."
"I know, but he cannot do much alone."
"In my opinion," said Mrs. Morgan firmly, "he enjoys it all too well to want to do anything." Her firm lips and eyes said as plainly as words could have done: "You will do as you like, no doubt, but you won't get my Dorothy to help to sustain any such thing."
"Well, mother, we are going to-night, to see what we can do toward sustaining, or something else. I hardly know what we are going for, I'm sure; but I know this much, we are going."
Perhaps of all the group no one was more surprised than Louise at this statement from John's lips.
She hesitated, and her heart beat high with anxiety and doubt. John meant to go, then; but ought he to speak so to his mother? And ought she to seem to approve of such speaking? Only a second of thought, then she said—
"O John, we wouldn't go if mother disapproved, would we? Lewis says he always minds his mother, and I'm sure I always minded mine."