, she could go
to meeting with them. In the fervour of the new religious feeling she
craved sanctified surroundings.

So, though she didn't feel at all sick and though she wanted desperately
to make paper-flowers, she docilely let herself be put to bed. Anyway,
perhaps it was just a penance sent to her by our Lord, to make atonement
for her sin.

By supper-time grandma agreed that she seemed well enough to go.
Throughout the meal Pete, who was wearing an aloof and serious manner,
refrained from looking at her, and she strived to keep her own anxious
gaze away from him. He wasn't going to the meeting with the other three.

Just as the lingering June twilight was beginning to darken--the
most peaceful hour of the day--Missy walked off sedately between
her grandparents. She was wearing her white "best dress." It seemed
appropriate that your best clothes should be always involved in the
matter of church going; that the spiritual beatification within should
be reflected by the garments without.

The Methodist church in Cherryvale prided itself that it was not
"new-fangled." It was not nearly so pretentious in appearance as was
the Presbyterian church. Missy, in her heart, preferred stained-glass
windows and their glorious reflections, as an asset to religion; but at
night services you were not apt to note that deficiency.

She sat well up front with her grandparents, as befitted their position
as pillars of the church, and from this vantage had a good view of
the proceedings. She could see every one in the choir, seated up there
behind the organ on the side platform. Polly Currier was in the choir;
she wasn't a Methodist, but she had a flute-like soprano voice, and the
Methodists--whom all the town knew had "poor singing"--had overstepped
the boundaries of sectarianism for this revival. Polly looked like an
angel in pink lawn and rose-wreathed leghorn hat; she couldn't know that
Missy gazed upon her with secret adoration as a creature of Romance--one
who had been kissed! Missy continued to gaze at Polly during the
preliminary songs--tunes rather disappointing, not so beautiful as
Missy's own favourite hymns--till the preacher appeared.

The Reverend Poole--"Brother" Poole as grandpa called him, though he
wasn't a relation--was a very tall, thin man with a blonde, rather
vacuous face; but at exhortation and prayer he "had the gift." For
so good a man, he had a remarkably poor opinion of the virtues of his
fellow-men. M