preserving, or cradle-rocking, but had been promptly
extinguished as flagrantly extravagant and altogether impossible. Now
that it had been openly mentioned, the contagion of the idea spread, and
in a month every sort of honest machinery for the increase of funds had
been set in motion: harvest suppers, pie sociables, old folks' concerts,
apron sales, and, as a last resort, a subscription paper, for the
church floor measured hundreds of square yards, and the carpet committee
announced that a good ingrain could not be purchased, even with the
church discount, for less than ninety-seven cents a yard.

The Dorcases took out their pencils, and when they multiplied the
surface of the floor by the price of the carpet per yard, each Dorcas
attaining a result entirely different from all the others, there was a
shriek of dismay, especially from the secretary, who had included in her
mathematical operation certain figures in her possession representing
the cubical contents of the church and the offending pitch of the roof,
thereby obtaining a product that would have dismayed a Croesus. Time
sped and efforts increased, but the Dorcases were at length obliged to
clip the wings of their desire and content themselves with carpeting
the pulpit and pulpit steps, the choir, and the two aisles, leaving the
floor in the pews until some future year.

How the women cut and contrived and matched that hardly-bought red
ingrain carpet, in the short December afternoons that ensued after its
purchase; so that, having failed to be ready for Thanksgiving, it could
be finished for the Christmas festivities!

They were sewing in the church, and as the last stitches were being
taken, Maria Sharp suddenly ejaculated in her impulsive fashion:--

"Would n't it have been just perfect if we could have had the pews
repainted before we laid the new carpet!"

"It would, indeed," the president answered; "but it will take us all
winter to pay for the present improvements, without any thought of fresh
paint. If only we had a few more men-folks to help along!"

"Or else none at all!" was Lobelia Brewster's suggestion. "It's havin'
so few that keeps us all stirred up. If there wa'n't any anywheres,
we'd have women deacons and carpenters and painters, and get along first
rate; for somehow the supply o' women always holds out, same as it does
with caterpillars an' flies an' grasshoppers!"

Everybody laughed, although Maria Sharp asserted that she for one was