“She might turn Methodist at any moment,” said Miss Cornelia.  “They tell me they went to the Methodist Church at Lowbridge quite as often as to the Presbyterian.  I haven’t caught them at it here yet, but I would not approve of taking Mrs. Jamieson into the Sunday School.  Yet we must not offend them.  We are losing too many people, by death or bad temper.  Mrs. Alec Davis has left the church, no one knows why.  She told the managers that she would never pay another cent to Mr. Meredith’s salary.  Of course, most people say that the children offended her, but somehow I don’t think so.  I tried to pump Faith, but all I could get out of her was that Mrs. Davis had come, seemingly in high good humour, to see her father, and had left in an awful rage, calling them all ‘varmints!’”

“Varmints, indeed!” said Susan furiously.  “Does Mrs. Alec Davis forget that her uncle on her mother’s side was suspected of poisoning his wife?  Not that it was ever proved, Mrs. Dr. dear, and it does not do to believe all you hear.  But if I had an uncle whose wife died without any satisfactory reason, I would not go about the country calling innocent children varmints.”

“The point is,” said Miss Cornelia, “that Mrs. Davis paid a large subscription, and how its loss is going to be made up is a problem.  And if she turns the other Douglases against Mr. Meredith, as she will certainly try to do, he will just have to go.”

“I do not think Mrs. Alec Davis is very well liked by the rest of the clan,” said Susan.  “It is not likely she will be able to influence them.”

“But those Douglases all hang together so.  If you touch one, you touch all.  We can’t do without them, so much is certain.  They pay half the salary.  They are not mean, whatever else may be said of them.  Norman Douglas used to give a hundred a year long ago before he left.”

“What did he leave for?” asked Anne.

“He declared a member of the session cheated him in a cow deal.  He hasn’t come to church for twenty years.  His wife used to come regular while she was alive, poor thing, but he never would let her pay anything, except one red cent every Sunday.  She felt dreadfully humiliated.  I don’t know that he was any too good a husband to her, though she was never heard to complain.  But she always had a cowed look.  Norman Douglas didn’t get the woman he wanted thirty years ago and the Douglases never liked to put up with second best.”

“Who was the woman he did want.”

“Ellen West.  They weren’t engaged exactly, I believe, but they went about together for two years.  And then they just broke off—­nobody ever know why.  Just some silly quarrel, I suppose.  And Norman went and married Hester Reese before his temper had time to cool—­married her just to spite Ellen, I haven’t a doubt.  So like a man!  Hester was a nice little thing, but she never had much spirit and he broke what little she