lowed
silently down her cheeks, but without a glance at Eldress Abby or a word
of comment she walked slowly away from the laundry, her chin high.

"Sue meant all right, she was only playing the plays of the world," said
Eldress Abby, "but you can well understand, Susanna, that we can't let
our Shaker children play that way and get wrong ideas into their heads
at the beginning. We don't condemn an honest, orderly marriage as a
worldly institution, but we claim it has no place in Christ's kingdom;
therefore we leave it to the world, where it belongs. The world's people
live on the lower plane of Adam; the Shakers try to live on the Christ
plane, in virgin purity, long-suffering, meekness, and patience."

"I see, I know," Susanna answered slowly, with a little glance at
injured Sue walking toward the house, "but we needn't leave the children
unhappy this morning, for I can think of a play that will comfort them
and please you.--Come back, Sue! Wait a minute, Mary and Jane, before
you go to Sister Martha! We will play the story that Sister Tabitha told
us last week. Do you remember about Mother Ann Lee in the English
prison? The soap-box will be her cell, for it was so small she could
not lie down in it. Take some of the shingles, Jane, and close up the
open side of the box. Do you see the large brown spot in one of them,
Mary? Push that very hard with a clothes-pin and there'll be a hole
through the shingle;--that's right! Now, Sister Tabitha said that Mother
Ann was kept for days without food, for people thought she was a wicked,
dangerous woman, and they would have been willing to let her die of
starvation. But there was a great key-hole in the door, and James
Whittaker, a boy of nineteen, who loved Mother Ann and believed in her,
put the stem of a clay pipe in the hole and poured a mixture of wine and
milk through it. He managed to do this day after day, so that when the
jailer opened the cell door, expecting to find Mother Ann dying for lack
of food, she walked out looking almost as strong and well as when she
entered. You can play it all out, and afterwards you can make the ship
that brought Mother Ann and the other Shakers from Liverpool to New
York. The clothes-pins can be--who will they be, Jane?"

"William Lee, Nancy Lee, James Whittaker, and I forget the others,"
recited Jane, like an obedient parrot.

"And it will be splendid to have James Whittaker, for he really came to
Albion," said Mary.

"Perhaps he st