Mrs. Miller nervously.
"We've done our best, and let's hope that folks will look up and not
down. It isn't as if they were going to set in the chandelier; they'll
have something else to think about when Nancy gets her hemlock branches
and white carnations in the pulpit vases. This morning my Abner picked
off two pinks from the plant I've been nursing in my dining-room for
weeks, trying to make it bloom for Christmas. I slapped his hands good,
and it's been haunting me ever since to think I had to correct him the
day before Christmas--Come, Lobelia, we must be hurrying!"

"One thing comforts me," exclaimed the Widow Buzzell, as she took her
hammer and tacks preparatory to leaving; "and that is that the Methodist
meetin'-house ain't got any carpet at all."

"Mrs. Buzzell, Mrs. Buzzell!" interrupted the minister's wife, with a
smile that took the sting from her speech. "It will be like punishing
little Abner Miller; if we think those thoughts on Christmas Eve, we
shall surely be haunted afterward."

"And anyway," interjected Maria Sharp, who always saved the situation,
"you just wait and see if the Methodists don't say they'd rather have no
carpet at all than have one that don't go all over the floor. I know
'em!" and she put on her hood and blanket-shawl as she gave one last fond
look at the improvements.

"I'm going home to get my supper, and come back afterward to lay the
carpet in my pew; my beans and brown bread will be just right by now, and
perhaps it will rest me a little; besides, I must feed 'Zekiel."

As Nancy Wentworth spoke, she sat in a corner of her own modest rear
seat, looking a little pale and tired. Her waving dark hair had loosened
and fallen over her cheeks, and her eyes gleamed from under it wistfully.
Nowadays Nancy's eyes never had the sparkle of gazing into the future,
but always the liquid softness that comes from looking backward.

"The church will be real cold by then, Nancy," objected Mrs.
Burbank.--"Good-night, Mrs. Baxter."

"Oh, no! I shall be back by half-past six, and I shall not work long. Do
you know what I believe I'll do, Mrs. Burbank, just through the holidays?
Christmas and New Year's both coming on Sunday this year, there'll be a
great many out to church, not counting the strangers that'll come to the
special service to-morrow. Instead of putting down my own pew carpet
that'll never be noticed here in the back, I'll lay it in the old Peabody
pew, for the red aisle-s