in a
devout mood which must have been beautiful to see and encouraging to the
good man.

Of course, Uncle Bentley was there--he always was, and forever in a
front pew, with his neck craned up looking backward to see if there was
anything that didn't need doing which he could do. He always tinkered
with the fires in the winter and fussed with the windows in the summer,
and did his worst with each. His strongest church point was ushering.
Not content to usher the stranger within our gates, he would usher all
of us, and always thrust us into pews with just the people we didn't
want to sit with. If you failed to follow him when he took you in tow,
he would stop and look back reproachfully, describing mighty indrawing
curves with his arm; and if you pretended not to see him, he would give
a low whistle to attract your attention, the arm working right along,
like a Holland windmill.

On this particular warm summer Sunday Uncle Bentley was in place wearing
his long, full-skirted coat, a queer, dark, bottle-green, purplish blue.
He had ushered to his own exceeding joy, and got two men in one pew, and
given them a single hymn-book, who wouldn't on week-days speak to each
other. I ought to mention that we had long before made a verb of Uncle
Bentley. To unclebentley was to do the wrong thing. It was a regular
verb, unclebentley, unclebentleyed, unclebentleying. Those two rampant
enemies in the same pew had been unclebentleyed.

The minister was floating along smoothly on the subject of peace when
Uncle Bentley was observed to throw up his head. He had heard a sound
outside. It was really nothing but one of Deacon Plummer's young
roosters crowing. The Deacon lived near, and vocal offerings from his
poultry were frequent and had ceased to interest any one except Uncle
Bentley. Then in the pauses between the preacher's periods we heard the
flapping of wings, with sudden stoppings and startings. Those
unregenerate fowls, unable to understand the good man's words, were
fighting. Even this didn't interest us--we were committed to peace. But
Uncle Bentley shot up like a jack-in-a-box and cantered down the aisle.
Of course, his notion was that the roosters were disturbing the
services, and that it was his duty to go out and stop them. We heard
vigorous "Shoos!" and "Take thats!" and "Consairn yous!" and then Uncle
Bentley came back looking very important, and as he stalked up the aisle
he glanced around and nodded his head, saying as