"She met me to-day and said they were expecting something handsome."
Mr. Grimes laughed bitterly.
"That's always the way with those people. They are the worst beggars! When a lot of folks get together and start a church it is almost indecent for them to come running around to ask other folks to support it. I have half a notion not to give them a cent."
"Not even for Mr. Borrow's salary?"
"Certainly not! Half the clergymen in the United States get less than a thousand dollars a year; why can't he do as the rest do? Am I to be called upon to support a lot of poor preachers? A good deal of nerve is required, I think, to ask such a thing of me."
Two weeks afterward Mr. Grimes and his wife sat together again on the porch in the cool of the evening.
"Now," said Grimes, "let us together go over these charities we were talking about and be done with them. Let us start with the tough fact staring us in the face that, with only one million dollars at four per cent. and all our new and necessary expenses, we shall have to look sharp or I'll be borrowing money to live on in less than eight months."
"Well," said Mrs. Grimes, "what shall we cut out? Would you give up the Baptist organ that we used to talk about?"
"Mary Jane, it is really surprising how you let such things as that stay in your mind. I considered that organ scheme abandoned long ago."
"Is it worth while, do you think, to do anything with the Methodist Church mortgage?"