They had been talking at one of the dozen entrances of the gospel tent. Elmer had been watching Sharon Falconer as she came briskly into the tent. She was no high priestess now in Grecian robe, but a business woman, in straw hat, gray suit, white shirt-waist, linen cuffs and collar. Only her blue bow and the jeweled cross on her watch-fob distinguished her from the women in offices. But Elmer, collecting every detail of her as a miner scoops up nuggets, knew now that she was not flat-breasted, as in the loose robe she might have been.
She spoke to the “personal workers,” the young women who volunteered to hold cottage prayer-meetings and to go from house to house stirring up spiritual prospects:
“My dear friends, I’m very glad you’re all praying, but there comes a time when you’ve got to add a little shoe-leather. While you’re longing for the Kingdom—the devil does his longing nights, and daytimes he hustles around seeing people, talking to ’em! Are you ashamed to go right in and ask folks to come to Christ—to come to our meetings, anyway? I’m not at all pleased. Not at all, my dear young friends. My charts show that in the Southeast district only one house in three has been visited. This won’t do! You’ve got to get over the idea that the service of the Lord is a nice game, like putting Easter lilies on the altar. Here there’s only five days left, and you haven’t yet waked up and got busy. And let’s not have any silly nonsense about hesitating to hit people for money-pledges, and hitting ’em hard! We can’t pay rent for this lot, and pay for lights and transportation and the wages of all this big crew I carry, on hot air! Now you—you pretty girl there with the red hair—my! I wish I had such hair!—what have you done, sure-enough done, this past week?”
In ten minutes she had them all crying, all aching to dash out and bring in souls and dollars.
She was leaving the tent when Elmer pounced on her, swaggering, his hand out.
“Sister Falconer, I want to congratulate you on your wonderful meetings. I’m a Baptist preacher—the Reverend Gantry.”
“Yes?” sharply. “Where is your church?”
“Why, uh, just at present I haven’t exactly got a church.”
She inspected his ruddiness, his glossiness, the odor of tobacco; her brilliant eyes had played all over him, and she demanded:
“What’s the trouble this time? Booze or women?”