How the women cut and contrived and matched that hardly-bought red ingrain carpet, in the short December afternoons that ensued after its purchase; so that, having failed to be ready for Thanksgiving, it could be finished for the Christmas festivities!

They were sewing in the church, and as the last stitches were being taken, Maria Sharp suddenly ejaculated in her impulsive fashion:—­

“Wouldn’t it have been just perfect if we could have had the pews repainted before we laid the new carpet!”

“It would, indeed,” the president answered; “but it will take us all winter to pay for the present improvements, without any thought of fresh paint.  If only we had a few more men-folks to help along!”

“Or else none at all!” was Lobelia Brewster’s suggestion.  “It’s havin’ so few that keeps us all stirred up.  If there wa’n’t any anywheres, we’d have women deacons and carpenters and painters, and get along first rate; for somehow the supply o’ women always holds out, same as it does with caterpillars an’ flies an’ grasshoppers!”

Everybody laughed, although Maria Sharp asserted that she for one was not willing to be called a caterpillar simply because there were too many women in the universe.

“I never noticed before how shabby and scarred and dirty the pews are,” said the minister’s wife as she looked at them reflectively.

“I’ve been thinking all the afternoon of the story about the poor old woman and the lily,” and Nancy Wentworth’s clear voice broke into the discussion.  “Do you remember some one gave her a stalk of Easter lilies and she set them in a glass pitcher on the kitchen table?  After looking at them for a few minutes, she got up from her chair and washed the pitcher until the glass shone.  Sitting down again, she glanced at the little window.  It would never do; she had forgotten how dusty and blurred it was, and she took her cloth and burnished the panes.  Then she scoured the table, then the floor, then blackened the stove before she sat down to her knitting.  And of course the lily had done it all, just by showing, in its whiteness, how grimy everything else was.”

The minister’s wife who had been in Edgewood only a few months, looked admiringly at Nancy’s bright face, wondering that five-and-thirty years of life, including ten of school-teaching, had done so little to mar its serenity.  “The lily story is as true as the gospel!” she exclaimed, “and I can see how one thing has led you to another in making the church comfortable.  But my husband says that two coats of paint on the pews would cost a considerable sum.”

“How about cleaning them?  I don’t believe they’ve had a good hard washing since the flood.”  The suggestion came from Deacon Miller’s wife to the president.

“They can’t even be scrubbed for less than fifteen or twenty dollars, for I thought of that and asked Mrs. Simpson yesterday, and she said twenty cents a pew was the cheapest she could do it for.”