pened her mellow brown eyes widely, as if in amazement at
her husband's tone.

"I don't understand you," she said. "Our position is perfectly
logical."

She had borrowed that phrase from Myra Wilson, and it floored the
elder. He got up, seized his hat, and strode from the room.

That night, at Jacob Wherrison's store at the Corner, the Putney men
talked over the new development. The social was certainly off--for a
time, anyway.

"Best let 'em alone, I say," said Wherrison. "They're mad at us now
and doing this to pay us out. But they'll cool down later on and we'll
have the social all right."

"But if they don't," said Andrew McKittrick gloomily, "who is going to
pay for that carpet?"

This was an unpleasant question. The others shirked it.

"I was always opposed to this action of the session," said Alec Craig.
"It wouldn't have hurt to have let the woman speak. 'Tisn't as if it
was a regular sermon."

"The session knew best," said Andrew sharply. "And the
minister--you're not going to set your opinion up against his, are
you, Craig?"

"Didn't know they taught such reverence for ministers in Danbridge,"
retorted Craig with a laugh.

"Best let 'em alone, as Wherrison says," said Abner Keech.

"Don't see what else we can do," said John Wilson shortly.

* * * * *

On Sunday morning the men were conscious of a bare, deserted
appearance in the church. Mr. Sinclair perceived it himself. After
some inward wondering he concluded that it was because there were no
flowers anywhere. The table before the pulpit was bare. On the organ a
vase held a sorry, faded bouquet left over from the previous week. The
floor was' unswept. Dust lay thickly on the pulpit Bible, the choir
chairs, and the pew backs.

"This church looks disgraceful," said John Robbins in an angry
undertone to his daughter Polly, who was president of the Flower
Band. "What in the name of common sense is the good of your Flower
Banders if you can't keep the place looking decent?"

"There is no Flower Band now, Father," whispered Polly in turn. "We've
disbanded. Women haven't any business to meddle in church matters. You
know the session said so."

It was well for Polly that she was too big to have her ears boxed.
Even so, it might not have saved her if they had been anywhere else
than in church.

Meanwhile the men who were sitting in the choir--three basses and two
tenors--were beginning to dimly suspect that there