“And isn’t saying what he should,” added Sister Green, with a sly snicker, which went around the room softly.

“But as I was saying—­” Sister Spicer began, when Sister Poteet, whose rocker, near the window, commanded a view of the front gate, interrupted with a warning, “’Sh-’sh.”

“Why shouldn’t I say what I wanted to when—­” Sister Spicer began.

“There she comes now,” explained Sister Poteet, “and as I live the deacon drove her here in his sleigh, and he’s waiting while she comes in.  I wonder what next,” and Sister Poteet, in conjunction with the entire society, gasped and held their eager breaths, awaiting the entrance of the subject of conversation.

Sister Spicer went to the front door to let her in, and she was greeted with the greatest cordiality by everybody.

“We were just talking about you and wondering why you were so late coming,” cried Sister Poteet.  “Now take off your things and make up for lost time.  There’s a pair of pants over there to be cut down to fit that poor little Snithers boy.”

The excitement and curiosity of the society were almost more than could be borne, but never a sister let on that she knew the deacon was at the gate waiting.  Indeed, as far as the widow could discover, there was not the slightest indication that anybody had ever heard there was such a person as the deacon in existence.

“Oh,” she chirruped, in the liveliest of humors, “you will have to excuse me for today.  Deacon Hawkins overtook me on the way here, and here said I had simply got to go sleigh-riding with him.  He’s waiting out at the gate now.”

“Is that so?” exclaimed the society unanimously, and rushed to the window to see if it were really true.

“Well, did you ever?” commented Sister Poteet, generally.

“Hardly ever,” laughed the widow, good-naturedly, “and I don’t want to lose the chance.  You know Deacon Hawkins isn’t asking somebody every day to go sleighing with him.  I told him I’d go if he would bring me around here to let you know what had become of me, and so he did.  Now, good-by, and I’ll be sure to be present at the next meeting.  I have to hurry because he’ll get fidgety.”

The widow ran away like a lively schoolgirl.  All the sisters watched her get into the sleigh with the deacon, and resumed the previous discussion with greatly increased interest.

But little recked the widow and less recked the deacon.  He had bought a new horse and he wanted the widow’s opinion of it, for the Widow Stimson was a competent judge of fine horseflesh.  If Deacon Hawkins had one insatiable ambition it was to own a horse which could fling its heels in the face of the best that Squire Hopkins drove.  In his early manhood the deacon was no deacon by a great deal.  But as the years gathered in behind him he put off most of the frivolities of youth and held now only to the one of driving a fast horse.  No other man in the