All this the Thanatopsis Club was to accomplish with no difficulty whatever, since its several husbands were the controllers of business and politics.  She was proud of herself for this practical view.

She had taken only half an hour to change a wire-fenced potato-plot into a walled rose-garden.  She hurried out to apprize Mrs. Leonard Warren, as president of the Thanatopsis, of the miracle which had been worked.

III

At a quarter to three Carol had left home; at half-past four she had created the Georgian town; at a quarter to five she was in the dignified poverty of the Congregational parsonage, her enthusiasm pattering upon Mrs. Leonard Warren like summer rain upon an old gray roof; at two minutes to five a town of demure courtyards and welcoming dormer windows had been erected, and at two minutes past five the entire town was as flat as Babylon.

Erect in a black William and Mary chair against gray and speckly-brown volumes of sermons and Biblical commentaries and Palestine geographies upon long pine shelves, her neat black shoes firm on a rag-rug, herself as correct and low-toned as her background, Mrs. Warren listened without comment till Carol was quite through, then answered delicately: 

“Yes, I think you draw a very nice picture of what might easily come to pass—­some day.  I have no doubt that such villages will be found on the prairie—­some day.  But if I might make just the least little criticism:  it seems to me that you are wrong in supposing either that the city hall would be the proper start, or that the Thanatopsis would be the right instrument.  After all, it’s the churches, isn’t it, that are the real heart of the community.  As you may possibly know, my husband is prominent in Congregational circles all through the state for his advocacy of church-union.  He hopes to see all the evangelical denominations joined in one strong body, opposing Catholicism and Christian Science, and properly guiding all movements that make for morality and prohibition.  Here, the combined churches could afford a splendid club-house, maybe a stucco and half-timber building with gargoyles and all sorts of pleasing decorations on it, which, it seems to me, would be lots better to impress the ordinary class of people than just a plain old-fashioned colonial house, such as you describe.  And that would be the proper center for all educational and pleasurable activities, instead of letting them fall into the hands of the politicians.”

“I don’t suppose it will take more than thirty or forty years for the churches to get together?” Carol said innocently.

“Hardly that long even; things are moving so rapidly.  So it would be a mistake to make any other plans.”

Carol did not recover her zeal till two days after, when she tried Mrs. George Edwin Mott, wife of the superintendent of schools.

Mrs. Mott commented, “Personally, I am terribly busy with dressmaking and having the seamstress in the house and all, but it would be splendid to have the other members of the Thanatopsis take up the question.  Except for one thing:  First and foremost, we must have a new schoolbuilding.  Mr. Mott says they are terribly cramped.”