ompensate by lowered voices
and lack of animated speech for the manifest irreverence of the topic.

Marg'et Ann and her mother came in the farm wagon, that the assisting
minister, the Rev. Samuel McClanahan, who was to preach the "action
sermon," might ride in the buggy with the pastor. There were four wooden
chairs in the box of the wagon, and the floor was strewn with
sweet-scented timothy and clover. Mrs. Morrison and Miss Nancy
McClanahan, who had come with her brother from Cedar Township to
communion, sat in two of the chairs, and Marg'et Ann and her younger
sister occupied the others. One of the boys sat on the high spring seat
with his brother Laban, who drove the team, and the other children were
distributed on the hay between their elders.

Marg'et Ann wore her mother's changeable silk made over and a cottage
bonnet with pink silk strings and skirt and a white ruche with a wreath
of pink flowers in the face trimming. Her brown hair was combed over her
ears like a sheet of burnished bronze and held out by puff combs, and
she had a wide embroidered collar, shaped like a halo, fastened by a
cairngorm in a square setting of gold.

Miss Nancy McClanahan and her mother talked in a subdued way of the Fast
Day services, and of the death of Squire Davidson, who lived the other
side of the creek, and the probable result of Esther Jane Skinner's
trouble with her chest. There was a tacit avoidance of all subjects
pertaining to the flesh except its ailments, but there was no long-faced
hypocrisy in the tones or manner of the two women. Marg'et Ann listened
to them and watched the receding perspective of the corn rows in the
brown fields. She had her token tied securely in the corner of her
handkerchief, and every time she felt it she thought regretfully of
Lloyd Archer. She had hoped he would make a confession of faith this
communion, but he had not come before the session at all. She knew he
had doubts concerning close communion, and she had heard him say that
certain complications of predestination and free will did not appear
reasonable to him. Marg'et Ann thought it very daring of him to exact
reasonableness of those in spiritual high places. She would as soon have
thought of criticising the Creator for making the sky blue instead of
green as for any of His immutable decrees as set forth in the Confession
of Faith. It did not prevent her liking Lloyd Archer that her father and
several of the elders whom he had venture