"Yes, I know, mother, you have old-fashioned ideas," said Mrs. Marx; "but the world ain't as it used to be when you was a girl. Now everybody's puttin' steam on; and churches and Sunday schools as well as all the rest. We have organs, and choirs, and concerts, and celebrations, and fairs, and festivals; and if we don't go with the crowd, they'll leave us behind, you see."
"I don't believe in it all!" said Mrs. Armadale.
"Well, mother, we've got to take the world as we find it. Now the children all through the village are all agog with the story of what the yellow church is goin' to do; and if the white church don't do somethin', they'll all run t'other way—that you may depend on. Children are children."
"I sometimes think the grown folks are children," said the old lady.
"Well, we ought to be children," said Mrs. Seelye; "I am sure we all know that. But Mr. Seelye thought this was the only thing we could do."
"There comes in the second difficulty, Mrs. Seelye," said Lois. "We cannot do it."
"I don't see why we cannot. We've as good a place for it, quite."
"I mean, we cannot do it satisfactorily. It will not be the same thing.
We cannot raise the money. Don't it take a good deal?"
"Well, it takes considerable. But I think, if we all try, we can scare it up somehow."
Lois shook her head. "The other church is richer than we are," she said.