ime in the
now clear atmosphere of the church, and that the parson's eye was keener
than before, why, that was a mere detail, and could not be avoided; what
was the loss of a little sleep compared with the discoloration of Mrs.
Jere Burbank's white ostrich feather and the smarting of Mrs. Jere
Burbank's eyes?

A new furnace followed the new chimney, in due course, and as a sense of
comfort grew, there was opportunity to notice the lack of beauty. Twice
in sixty years had some well-to-do summer parishioner painted the
interior of the church at his own expense; but although the roof had been
many times reshingled, it had always persisted in leaking, so that the
ceiling and walls were disfigured by unsightly spots and stains and
streaks. The question of shingling was tacitly felt to be outside the
feminine domain, but as there were five women to one man in the church
membership, the feminine domain was frequently obliged to extend its
limits into the hitherto unknown. Matters of tarring and water-proofing
were discussed in and out of season, and the very school-children imbibed
knowledge concerning lapping, overlapping, and cross-lapping, and first
and second quality of cedar shingles. Miss Lobelia Brewster, who had a
rooted distrust of anything done by mere man, created strife by remarking
that she could have stopped the leak in the belfry tower with her red
flannel petticoat better than the Milltown man with his new-fangled
rubber sheeting, and that the last shingling could have been more
thoroughly done by a "female infant babe"; whereupon the person
criticized retorted that he wished Miss Lobelia Brewster had a few infant
babes to "put on the job--he'd like to see 'em try." Meantime several
male members of the congregation, who at one time or another had sat on
the roof during the hottest of the dog days to see that shingling
operations we're conscientiously and skilfully performed, were very
pessimistic as to any satisfactory result ever being achieved.

"The angle of the roof--what they call the 'pitch'--they say that that's
always been wrong," announced the secretary of the Dorcas in a business
session.

"Is it that kind of pitch that the Bible says you can't touch without
being defiled? If not, I vote that we unshingle the roof and alter the
pitch!" This proposal came from a sister named Maria Sharp, who had
valiantly offered the year before to move the smoky chimney with her own
hands, if the "men-folks"