Again the child looked out expectantly.
"Did he say anything back?" he asked eagerly.
"Not a word—not a word," said the man again. This time he laughed, nervously and foolishly. "But mebbe he will," he mumbled superstitiously. "I dunno. Now, you set there. An' then you give 'em the paper—an' go with anybody out o' the church that asks you. Dad may not get back for—quite a while...."
The man went. The child, deep in the delight of a cream puff, wondered and looked after him troublously, and was vaguely comforted by the murmur of voices beyond the doors.
"Why, God didn't answer back because he was to the church meeting," the child thought, when he heard the people moving about within.
I
"Inside the church that night," Calliope Marsh is wont to tell it, "the Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality was having one of our special meetings, with hot chocolate and ice lemonade and two kinds of wafers. There wasn't a very big attendance, account of the rain, and there was so much refreshments ready that us ladies was urgin' the men to have all they wanted.
"'Drink both kinds, Timothy,' Mis Toplady says to her husband, persuadin'; 'it'll have to be throwed away if somebody don't drink it up.'