This was followed by an electric silence.  Prudence was biting her lips painfully, and counting by tens as fast as she could.  Fairy was mentally going over the prayer, sentence by sentence, and attributing each petition to the individual member in the old church at Exminster to whom it belonged.  The twins were a little amazed, and quite proud.  Connie was an honor to the parsonage,—­but they were concerned lest they themselves should do not quite so well when their days came.

But in less than a moment the minister-father began his prayer.  His voice was a little subdued, and he prayed with less fervor and abandon than usual, but otherwise things went off quite nicely.  When he said, “Amen,” Prudence was on her feet and half-way up-stairs before the others were fairly risen.  Fairy stood gazing intently out of the window for a moment, and then went out to the barn to see if the horse was through eating.  Mr. Starr walked gravely and soberly out the front door, and around the house.  He ran into Fairy coming out the kitchen door, and they glanced quickly at each other.

“Hurry, papa,” she whispered, “you can’t hold in much longer!  Neither can I!”

And together, choking with laughter, they hurried into the barn and gave full vent to their feelings.

So it was that the twins and Connie were alone for a while.

“You did a pretty good job, Connie,” said Carol approvingly.

“Yes.  I think I did myself,” was the complacent answer.  “But I intended to put in, ’Keep us as the apple of Thy eye, hold us in the hollow of Thy hand,’ and I forgot it until I had said ‘Amen.’  I had a notion to put in a post-script, but I believe that isn’t done.”

“Never mind,” said Carol, “I’ll use that in mine, to-morrow.”

It can not be said that this form of family worship was a great success.  The twins were invariably stereotyped, cut and dried.  They thanked the Lord for the beautiful morning, for kind friends, for health, and family, and parsonage.  Connie always prayed in sentences extracted from the prayers of others she had often heard, and every time with nearly disastrous effect.

But the days passed around, and Prudence and Carol’s turn came again.  Carol was a thoughtless, impetuous, impulsive girl, and her prayers were as nearly “verbal repetitions” as any prayers could be.  So on this morning, after the reading of the chapter, Carol knelt by her chair, and began in her customary solemn voice: 

“Oh, our Father, we thank Thee for this beautiful morning.”  Then intense silence.  For Carol remembered with horror and shame that it was a dreary, dismal morning, cloudy, ugly and all unlovely.  In her despair, the rest of her petition scattered to the four winds of heaven.  She couldn’t think of another word, so she gulped, and stammered out a faint “Amen.”