ght during this speech, which everyone in
the church must have heard, I know not. Gossip had it that he changed
colour. We wretched occupants of the King pew were concerned only with
our own outraged feelings.

"And there's Melita Ross," went on Peg. "She's got the same bonnet on
she had last time I was in Carlisle church six years ago. Some folks has
the knack of making things last. But look at the style Mrs. Elmer Brewer
wears, will yez? Yez wouldn't think her mother died in the poor-house,
would yez, now?"

Poor Mrs. Brewer! From the tip of her smart kid shoes to the dainty
cluster of ostrich tips in her bonnet--she was most immaculately and
handsomely arrayed; but I venture to think she could have taken
small pleasure in her fashionable attire that evening. Some of the
unregenerate, including Dan, were shaking with suppressed laughter, but
most of the people looked as if they were afraid to smile, lest their
turn should come next.

"There's old Stephen Grant coming in," exclaimed Peg viciously, shaking
her floury fist at him, "and looking as if butter wouldn't melt in his
mouth. He may be an elder, but he's a scoundrel just the same. He set
fire to his house to get the insurance and then blamed ME for doing it.
But I got even with him for it. Oh, yes! He knows that, and so do I! He,
he!"

Peg chuckled quite fiendishly and Stephen Grant tried to look as if
nothing had been said.

"Oh, will the minister never come?" moaned Felicity in my ear. "Surely
she'll have to stop then."

But the minister did not come and Peg had no intention of stopping.

"There's Maria Dean." she resumed. "I haven't seen Maria for years.
I never call there for she never seems to have anything to eat in the
house. She was a Clayton and the Claytons never could cook. Maria
sorter looks as if she'd shrunk in the wash, now, don't she? And there's
Douglas Nicholson. His brother put rat poison in the family pancakes.
Nice little trick that, wasn't it? They say it was by mistake. I hope it
WAS a mistake. His wife is all rigged out in silk. Yez wouldn't think
to look at her she was married in cotton--and mighty thankful to get
married in anything, it's my opinion. There's Timothy Patterson. He's
the meanest man alive--meaner'n Sam Kinnaird even. Timothy pays his
children five cents apiece to go without their suppers, and then steals
the cents out of their pockets after they've gone to bed. It's a fact.
And when his old father died he wouldn't