is sleigh, and he's waiting while she comes
in. I wonder what next," and Sister Poteet, in conjunction with the
entire society, gasped and held their eager breaths, awaiting the
entrance of the subject of conversation.

Sister Spicer went to the front door to let her in, and she was
greeted with the greatest cordiality by everybody.

"We were just talking about you and wondering why you were so late
coming," cried Sister Poteet. "Now take off your things and make up
for lost time. There's a pair of pants over there to be cut down to
fit that poor little Snithers boy."

The excitement and curiosity of the society were almost more than
could be borne, but never a sister let on that she knew the deacon was
at the gate waiting. Indeed, as far as the widow could discover, there
was not the slightest indication that anybody had ever heard there was
such a person as the deacon in existence.

"Oh," she chirruped, in the liveliest of humors, "you will have to
excuse me for today. Deacon Hawkins overtook me on the way here, and
here said I had simply got to go sleigh-riding with him. He's waiting
out at the gate now."

"Is that so?" exclaimed the society unanimously, and rushed to the
window to see if it were really true.

"Well, did you ever?" commented Sister Poteet, generally.

"Hardly ever," laughed the widow, good-naturedly, "and I don't want to
lose the chance. You know Deacon Hawkins isn't asking somebody every
day to go sleighing with him. I told him I'd go if he would bring me
around here to let you know what had become of me, and so he did. Now,
good-by, and I'll be sure to be present at the next meeting. I have to
hurry because he'll get fidgety."

The widow ran away like a lively schoolgirl. All the sisters watched
her get into the sleigh with the deacon, and resumed the previous
discussion with greatly increased interest.

But little recked the widow and less recked the deacon. He had bought
a new horse and he wanted the widow's opinion of it, for the Widow
Stimson was a competent judge of fine horseflesh. If Deacon Hawkins
had one insatiable ambition it was to own a horse which could fling
its heels in the face of the best that Squire Hopkins drove. In his
early manhood the deacon was no deacon by a great deal. But as the
years gathered in behind him he put off most of the frivolities of
youth and held now only to the one of driving a fast horse. No other
man in the county drove anything faster except Squ