ad enough to pray in
public for the rector and his wife; it was entirely inexcusable to hint
at the presence of a sinner in their midst, at the very board now
covered with the home-made dainties cooked and sent in by the ladies of
Hawthorne. In itself perhaps the prayer, though trite and redundant
(Ringfield was not in his best vein, no longer single-minded), was
eloquent and pointed, and the reference to the snows and rivers of the
country extremely poetic and suggestive, yet it was not in accordance
with the best taste, although prompted by the best feeling. The rector
and his wife, ignoring their own sentiments, made haste to smooth away
the little difficulty that had thus unexpectedly arisen, and in a few
minutes all was in a pleasant clatter and babble with the pouring of
tea, cutting of huge three-decker cakes, and passing of large, solid
plates holding pyramids of equally large and solid sandwiches.
Ringfield, devoting himself to the English visitors and the person in
black silk, who was the widow of a deceased lumber king correctly
reputed to have left an enormous fortune, was by the nature of things
the last to perceive that he had wounded the delicate sensibilities of
the company, and therefore he made a good meal, unconscious of the
comments lower down his table and also around the rector.

"It's always the way with them Methodists," said one speaker in a
careful undertone, a venerable body of fifty or so, with four teeth
left in his head, bent, bald and wrinkled. "They pride themselves on
what they call 'extem-pore' speaking." He gave the word only three
syllables of course. "Why, it's mostly out of the Prayer Book anyway!
He said 'any other infirmity,' did you notice? And we say, 'any other
adversity,' don't we? Well, where's the difference?"

"The tairms are not precisely in the nature of synonyms," remarked the
schoolmaster, a Scotchman of sandy and freckled appearance, who was
cutting a sandwich into small pieces with his penknife and then
frugally conveying them to his mouth with the aid of the same useful
implement. "But in a sairtain sense ye can _call_ them synonyms."

"It's out of course and all irregular like to pray for the Queen and
the Royal Family on a day like this. 'Twould be best keep that for
Sundays where it belongs," said the wife of the ancient who had spoken
first.

"What can ye expect, ma'am, when they come to it without their notes?
Stands to reason, if any man's going to