raid it would n't last him. The seat back o' 'Squire Bean's
is the old Peabody pew--ain't that the Peabody pew you're scrubbin',
Nancy?"

"I believe so," Nancy answered, never pausing in her labors. "It's so
long since anybody sat there, it's hard to remember."

"It is the Peabodys', I know it, because the aisle runs right up facin'
it. I can see old Deacon Peabody settin' in this end same as if 't was
yesterday."

"He had died before Jere and I came back here to live," said Mrs.
Burbank. "The first I remember, Justin Peabody sat in the end seat;
the sister that died, next, and in the corner, against the wall, Mrs.
Peabody, with a crape shawl and a palmleaf fan. They were a handsome
family. You used to sit with them sometimes, Nancy; Esther was great
friends with you."

"Yes, she was," Nancy replied, lifting the tattered cushion from its
place and brushing it; "and I with her. What is the use of scrubbing and
carpeting, when there are only twenty pew-cushions and six hassocks in
the whole church, and most of them ragged? How can I ever mend this?"

"I should n't trouble myself to darn other people's cushions!" This
unchristian sentiment came in Mrs. Miller's ringing tones from the rear
of the church.

"I don't know why," argued Maria Sharp. "I'm going to mend my Aunt
Achsa's cushion, and we haven't spoken for years; but hers is the next
pew to mine, and I'm going to have my part of the church look decent,
even if she is too stingy to do her share. Besides, there are n't
any Peabodys left to do their own darning, and Nancy was friends with
Esther."

"Yes, it's nothing more than right," Nancy replied, with a note of
relief in her voice, "considering Esther."

"Though he don't belong to the scrubbin' sex, there is one Peabody
alive, as you know, if you stop to think, Maria; for Justin's alive, and
livin' out West somewheres. At least, he's as much alive as ever he was;
he was as good as dead when he was twenty-one, but his mother was always
too soft-hearted to bury him."

There was considerable laughter over this sally of the outspoken Mrs.
Sargent, whose keen wit was the delight of the neighborhood.

"I know he's alive and doing business in Detroit, for I got his address
a week or ten days ago, and wrote, asking him if he'd like to give a
couple of dollars toward repairing the old church."

Everybody looked at Mrs. Burbank with interest.

"Has n't he answered?" asked Maria Sharp. Nancy Wentworth held her
b