“Come right in, gentlemen,” I says. “If it’s money, I can’t give you a cent. If it’s work, I’m drove to death as it is. But if it’s advice, I do enjoy myself giving that.”
It was our own superintendent that spoke, as being the least foreign to me, I s’pose,—though it happened that I was better acquainted with both the other two.
“It’s neither, Miss Marsh,” he says, “it’s some ideas we want off’n you. We’ve got,” says he, “a plan.”
Then he unrolled it, assisted by the other two.
“We thought,” he says, “that in all this added interest in church attendance which we are hoping to stimulate, the three churches had ought to pull together a little.”
At that my heart jumped up. It was what I had been longing for, and grieving because it didn’t come true.
“We thought we’d ought to have a little more community effort,” says the White Frame superintendent, clearing his throat. I guess he knew how that word “community” always gets me. I’d rather read that one word than half the whole books on the market.
“Oh, yes,” I says. “Yes! I think so too.”
“We thought we’d ought to make the experience one of particular blessing and fellowship,” says the Red Brick superintendent, fairly beaming.
And me, the simple soul, I beamed back.