d the subscription committee hoped that they might
not be eternally driving over the country to get somebody's fifty cents
that had been over-due for eight months, but might take their onerous
duties a little more easily.

"It does seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!" complained Mrs.
Robinson. "If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be
nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come
here, and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite
different, and I only hope they won't get wasteful and run into debt.
They say she keeps the parlor blinds open bout half the time, and the
room is lit up so often evenin's that the neighbors think her and Mr.
Baxter must set in there. It don't seem hardly as if it could be so, but
Mrs. Buzzell says tis, and she says we might as well say good-by to the
parlor carpet, which is church property, for the Baxters are living all
over it!"

This criticism was the only discordant note in the chorus of praise, and
the people gradually grew accustomed to the open blinds and the overused
parlor carpet, which was just completing its twenty-fifth year of honest
service.

Mrs. Baxter communicated her patriotic idea of a new flag to the Dorcas
Society, proposing that the women should cut and make it themselves.

"It may not be quite as good as those manufactured in the large cities,"
she said, "but we shall be proud to see our home-made flag flying in the
breeze, and it will mean all the more to the young voters growing up, to
remember that their mothers made it with their own hands."

"How would it do to let some of the girls help?" modestly asked Miss
Dearborn, the Riverboro teacher. "We might choose the best sewers and
let them put in at least a few stitches, so that they can feel they have
a share in it."

"Just the thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Baxter. "We can cut the stripes and sew
them together, and after we have basted on the white stars the girls can
apply them to the blue ground. We must have it ready for the campaign
rally, and we couldn't christen it at a better time than in this
presidential year."

II

In this way the great enterprise was started, and day by day the
preparations went forward in the two villages.

The boys, as future voters and fighters, demanded an active share in
the proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum
corps, so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke
th