This, as Desire knew, was perfectly legitimate.  No ice-cream of any kind could be bought in Bainbridge on Sunday.  Therefore a certain proportion of the population had to descend into its cellars and make it.  It was even possible to tell, if one were curious, how many families were going to have ice-cream for dinner by counting the empty seats at morning service.  Nearly all of the more prominent families owned freezers while many of those who were freezerless did not go to church, anyway.  From which it would seem that, in Bainbridge at least, the righteous had prospered.

On this hot morning, therefore, Desire collected Mr. McClintock’s belief alone.  It was an especially puzzling one, having to do with the origin and meaning of pain and founded upon the text, “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.”

“There is a tendency among modern translators,” began Mr. McClintock, “a tendency which I deplore, to render the word ‘chasteneth’ as ‘teacheth or directeth.’  This rendering, in my opinion, is regrettably lax.  We will therefore confine our attention to the older version.  It is my belief that. . . .”

Desire listened attentively to a lengthy and blood-curdling exposition of this belief and was still in the daze which followed the hearty singing of the doxology on top of it when the assistant Sunday School Superintendent asked her to take a class.  He was a very hot assistant and a very hurried one.  Even while he spoke to Desire his eye wandered past her to some of his flock who were escaping by the church door.

“Do take a class, Mrs. Spence,” he urged.

“Do you mean teach one?” asked Desire.  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how.”

“Beg pardon?  Oh, but of course you do.  It is only for today.  We are so short.  You will do splendidly, I’m sure.  They are very little girls and it’s in the Old Testament.”

“But I don’t—­”

“Oh, that will be quite all right.  It’s Moses.  Quite easy.”

“I have never—­”

“It doesn’t matter, really.  Just the plain story, you know.  I find myself the best way is to adopt a cheerful, conversational manner and keep them from asking questions.  At that age they never ask the right ones.  Stump you every time if you’re not careful.  Give them the facts.  They’ll understand them later.”

“I don’t understand them myself,” objected Desire.  But by this time the assistant’s eye was quite distracted.

“So very good of you,” he murmured, “if you will come this way—­”

Desire went that way and presently found herself seated in the Sunday School room in a blazing bar of sunlight and facing a row of small Bainbridgers, surprisingly brisk and wide-awake considering the weather.

“We usually have our boys’ and girls’ classes separate,” explained the assistant.  “But this is a mixed class as you see.”

Desire saw that the mixture consisted of a very round boy in a very stiff sailor suit.