tts, "look at Archie B."

Mrs. Butts hastily reached over the bench and yanked Archie B. down.
His whiskers were confiscated and in a moment he was on his knees and
deeply devotional, while the young Hillites nudged each other, and
giggled and the young Cottontowners stared and wondered, and looked
to see when Archie B. would be hung up by the thumbs.

The Bishop was reading the afternoon chapter when the animal in
Archie B. broke out in another spot. The chapter was where Zacharias
climbed into a sycamore tree to see his passing Lord. There was a
rattling of the stove pipe in one corner.

"Maw," whispered Miss Butts, "Jes' look at Archie B.--he's climbin'
the stove pipe like Zacharias did the sycamo'."

Horror again swept over Cottontown, while the Hillites cackled aloud.
The Elder settled it by calmly laying aside his spectacles and
starting down the pulpit steps. But Archie B. guessed his purpose and
before he had reached the last step he was sitting demurely by the
side of his pious brother, intently engaged in reading the New
Testament.

Without his glasses, the Elder never knew one twin from the other,
but presuming that the studious one was Ozzie B., he seized the other
by the ear, pulled him to the open window and pitched him out on the
grass.

It was Ozzie B. of course, and Archie B. turned cautiously around to
the Hillites behind, after the Elder had gone back to his chapter,
and whispered:

"_Venture pee-wee under the bridge--bam--bam--bam._"

Throughout the sermon Archie B. kept the young Hillites in a paroxysm
of smirks.

Elder Butts' legs were brackets, or more properly parentheses, and as
he preached and thundered and gesticulated and whined and sang his
sermon, he forgot all earthly things.

Knowing this, Archie B. would crawl up behind his father and
thrusting his head in between his legs, where the brackets were most
pronounced, would emphasize all that was said with wry grimaces and
gestures.

No language can fittingly describe the way Elder Butts delivered his
discourse. The sentences were whined, howled or sung, ending always
in the vocal expletive--"_ah--ah_."

When the elder had finished and sat down, Archie B. was sitting
demurely on the platform steps.

Then the latest Scruggs baby was brought forward to be baptised.
There were already ten in the family.

The Bishop took the infant tenderly and said: "Sister Scruggs, which
church shall I put him into?"

"'Piscopal," whisper