"We," said Mrs. Solomon Black with weighty emphasis, "are going to
get up a church fair and raise that money, and we are going to pay
your salary. We can't stand it another minute. We had better run in
debt to the butcher and baker than to the Lord."

Wesley Elliot regarded her gloomily. "I never liked the idea of
church fairs very well," he returned hesitatingly. "It has always
seemed to me like sheer beggary."

"Then," said Mrs. Solomon Black, "we will beg."

Mrs. Solomon Black was a woman who had always had her way. There was
not one line which denoted yielding in her large, still handsome
face, set about with very elaborate water-waves which she had
arranged so many years that her black hair needed scarcely any
attention. It would almost seem as if Mrs. Solomon Black had been
born with water waves.

She spoke firmly but she smiled, as his mother might have done, at
the young man, who had preached his innocent best in Brookville for
months without any emolument.

"Now don't you worry one mite about it," said she. "Church fairs may
be begging, but they belong to the history of the United States of
America, and I miss my guess if there would have been much preaching
of the gospel in a good many places without them. I guess it ain't
any worse to hold church fairs in this country than it is to have the
outrageous goings on in the old country. I guess we can cheat a