"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."

"We've done everything else," said Nancy Wentworth, with a twitch of her
thread; "why don't we scrub the pews? There's nothing in the orthodox
creed to forbid, is there?"

"Speakin' o' creeds," and here old Mrs. Sargent paused in her work,
"Elder Ransom from Acreville stopped with us last night, an' he tells me
they recite the Euthanasian Creed every few Sundays in the Episcopal
Church. I didn't want him to know how ignorant I was, but I looked up
the word in the dictionary. It means easy death, and I can't see any
sense in that, though it's a terrible long creed, the Elder says, an' if
it's any longer 'n ourn, I should think anybody _might_ easy die learnin'
it!"

"I think the word is Athanasian," ventured the minister's wife.

"Elder Ransom's always plumb full o' doctrine," asserted Miss Brewster,
pursuing the subject. "For my part, I'm glad he preferred Acreville to
our place. He was so busy bein' a minister, he never got round to bein'
a human creeter. When he used to come to sociables and picnics, always
lookin' kind o' like the potato blight, I used to think how complete he'd
be if he had a foldin' pulpit under his coat tails; they make foldin'
beds nowadays, an' I s'pose they could make foldin' pulpits, if there was
a call."

"Land sakes, I hope there won't be!" exclaimed Mrs. Sargent. "An' the