The Old Peabody Pew | Page 6

the choir, and the two aisles,
leaving the floor in the pews until some future year.
How the women cut and contrived and matched that hardly-bought red
ingrain carpet, in the short December afternoons that ensued after its
purchase; so that, having failed to be ready for Thanksgiving, it could
be finished for the Christmas festivities!
They were sewing in the church, and as the last stitches were being
taken, Maria Sharp suddenly ejaculated in her impulsive fashion:-
"Wouldn't it have been just perfect if we could have had the pews
repainted before we laid the new carpet!"
"It would, indeed," the president answered; "but it will take us all
winter to pay for the present improvements, without any thought of
fresh paint. If only we had a few more men-folks to help along!"
"Or else none at all!" was Lobelia Brewster's suggestion. "It's havin' so
few that keeps us all stirred up. If there wa'n't any anywheres, we'd
have women deacons and carpenters and painters, and get along first
rate; for somehow the supply o' women always holds out, same as it
does with caterpillars an' flies an' grasshoppers!"
Everybody laughed, although Maria Sharp asserted that she for one was
not willing to be called a caterpillar simply because there were too
many women in the universe.
"I never noticed before how shabby and scarred and dirty the pews
are," said the minister's wife as she looked at them reflectively.
"I've been thinking all the afternoon of the story about the poor old
woman and the lily," and Nancy Wentworth's clear voice broke into the
discussion. "Do you remember some one gave her a stalk of Easter

lilies and she set them in a glass pitcher on the kitchen table? After
looking at them for a few minutes, she got up from her chair and
washed the pitcher until the glass shone. Sitting down again, she
glanced at the little window. It would never do; she had forgotten how
dusty and blurred it was, and she took her cloth and burnished the
panes. Then she scoured the table, then the floor, then blackened the
stove before she sat down to her knitting. And of course the lily had
done it all, just by showing, in its whiteness, how grimy everything else
was."
The minister's wife who had been in Edgewood only a few months,
looked admiringly at Nancy's bright face, wondering that five-and-
thirty years of life, including ten of school-teaching, had done so little
to mar its serenity. "The lily story is as true as the gospel!" she
exclaimed, "and I can see how one thing has led you to another in
making the church comfortable. But my husband says that two coats of
paint on the pews would cost a considerable sum."
"How about cleaning them? I don't believe they've had a good hard
washing since the flood." The suggestion came from Deacon Miller's
wife to the president.
"They can't even be scrubbed for less than fifteen or twenty dollars, for
I thought of that and asked Mrs. Simpson yesterday, and she said
twenty cents a pew was the cheapest she could do it for."
"We've done everything else," said Nancy Wentworth, with a twitch of
her thread; "why don't we scrub the pews? There's nothing in the
orthodox creed to forbid, is there?"
"Speakin' o' creeds," and here old Mrs. Sargent paused in her work,
"Elder Ransom from Acreville stopped with us last night, an' he tells
me they recite the Euthanasian Creed every few Sundays in the
Episcopal Church. I didn't want him to know how ignorant I was, but I
looked up the word in the dictionary. It means easy death, and I can't
see any sense in that, though it's a terrible long creed, the Elder says,
an' if it's any longer 'n ourn, I should think anybody MIGHT easy die
learnin' it!"

"I think the word is Athanasian," ventured the minister's wife.
"Elder Ransom's always plumb full o' doctrine," asserted Miss Brewster,
pursuing the subject. "For my part, I'm glad he preferred Acreville to
our place. He was so busy bein' a minister, he never got round to bein' a
human creeter. When he used to come to sociables and picnics, always
lookin' kind o' like the potato blight, I used to think how complete he'd
be if he had a foldin' pulpit under his coat tails; they make foldin' beds
nowadays, an' I s'pose they could make foldin' pulpits, if there was a
call."
"Land sakes, I hope there won't be!" exclaimed Mrs. Sargent. "An' the
Elder never said much of anything either, though he was always
preachin'! Now your husband, Mis' Baxter, always has plenty to say
after you think he's all through. There's water in his well when the
others is