tor's Bible class.
Mr. Pettit said he was surprised to hear it. It couldn't have been the
weather that kept them away, could it? Janey said she didn't know. Then
he asked her what they were going to sing for Christmas, and she
began on "We three kings of Orient are," and broke off to ask him what
"Orient" meant, and he told her that Orient was out on the Sunbury pike,
about three miles this side of Olive Green, and her Ma said: "Lester
Pettit, I wish't you'd ever grow up and learn how to behave yourself.
Why, honey, it means the East. The three wise men came from the East,
don't you mind?"

At the Centre Street M. E. Church, where Janey Pettit went to
Sunday-school, there were big doings. Little Lycurgus Emerson, whose
mother sent him down to Littell's in a hurry for two pounds of brown
sugar, and who had already been an hour and a half getting past
Plotner's and Case's, heard Brother Littell and Abel Horn talking over
what they had decided at the "fishery meetin'." (By the time Curg got
so that he shaved, he knew that "officiary" was the right way to say
it, just as "certificate" is the right way to say "stiffcut.") There was
going to be a Christmas tree clear up to the ceiling, all stuck full of
candles and strung with pop-corn, and a chimney for Santa Claus to climb
down and give out the presents and call out the names on them. Every
child in the Sunday-school was to get a bag of candy and an orange, and
there were going to be "exercises." Curg thought it would be kind of
funny to go through gymnastics, but, just then, he saw Uncle Billy
Nicholson come in, and he hid. He didn't want to be patted on the head
and--asked things.

Uncle Billy had his mouth all puckered up, and his eyebrows looked more
like tooth-brushes than ever. He put down the list of groceries that
Aunt Libby had written out for him, because he couldn't remember things
very well, and commenced to lay down the law.

"Such carryin's on in the house o' God!" he snorted. "Why the very idy!
Talk about them Pharisees an' Sadducees a-makin' the temple a den o'
thieves! W'y, you're a-turnin' it into a theayter with your play-actin'
tomfoolery! They'll be no blessin' on it, now you mark."

"Aunt Libby say whether she wanted stoned raisins?" asked Brother
Littell, who was copying off the list on the order book.

"I disremember, but you better send up the reg'lar raisins. Gittin' too
many newfangled contraptions these days. They're a-callin' it a theayter