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“No,” answered Mrs. Sargent, glad of any opportunity to retail neighbourhood news. “‘Squire Bean’s folks have moved to Portland to be with the married daughter. Somebody has to stay with her, and her husband won’t. The ‘Squire ain’t a strong man, and he’s most too old to go to meetin’ now. The youngest son has just died in New York, so I hear.”

“What ailed him?” inquired Maria Sharp.

“I guess he was completely wore out takin’ care of his health,” returned Mrs. Sargent. “He had a splendid constitution from a boy, but he was always afraid it wouldn’t last him.–The seat back o’ ‘Squire Bean’s is the old Peabody pew–ain’t that the Peabody pew you’re scrubbin’, Nancy?”

“I believe so,” Nancy answered, never pausing in her labours. “It’s so long since anybody sat there, it’s hard to remember.”

“It is the Peabodys’, I know it, because the aisle runs right up facin’ it. I can see old Deacon Peabody settin’ in this end same as if ’twas yesterday.”

“He had died before Jere and I came back here to live,” said Mrs. Burbank. “The first I remember, Justin Peabody sat in the end seat; the sister that died, next, and in the corner, against the wall, Mrs. Peabody, with a crepe shawl and a palm-leaf fan. They were a handsome family. You used to sit with them sometimes, Nancy; Esther was great friends with you.”

“Yes, she was,” Nancy replied, lifting the tattered cushion from its place and brushing it; “and I with her.–What is the use of scrubbing and carpeting, when there are only twenty pew-cushions and six hassocks in the whole church, and most of them ragged? How can I ever mend this?”

“I shouldn’t trouble myself to darn other people’s cushions!”

This unchristian sentiment came in Mrs. Miller’s ringing tones from the rear of the church.

“I don’t know why,” argued Maria Sharp. “I’m going to mend my Aunt Achsa’s cushion, and we haven’t spoken for years; but hers is the next pew to mine, and I’m going to have my part of the church look decent, even if she is too stingy to do her share. Besides, there aren’t any Peabodys left to do their own darning, and Nancy was friends with Esther.”

“Yes, it’s nothing more than right,” Nancy replied, with a note of relief in her voice, “considering Esther.”

“Though he don’t belong to the scrubbin’ sex, there is one Peabody alive, as you know, if you stop to think, Maria; for Justin’s alive, and livin’ out West somewheres. At least, he’s as much alive as ever he was; he was as good as dead when he was twenty-one, but his mother was always too soft-hearted to bury him.”

There was considerable laughter over this sally of the outspoken Mrs. Sargent, whose keen wit was the delight of the neighbourhood.

“I know he’s alive and doing business in Detroit, for I got his address a week or ten days ago, and wrote, asking him if he’d like to give a couple of dollars toward repairing the old church.”

Everybody looked at Mrs. Burbank with interest.

“Hasn’t he answered?” asked Maria Sharp.

Nancy Wentworth held her breath, turned her face to the wall, and silently wiped the paint of the wainscoting. The blood that had rushed into her cheeks at Mrs. Sargent’s jeering reference to Justin Peabody still lingered there for any one who ran to read, but fortunately nobody ran; they were too busy scrubbing.

“Not yet. Folks don’t hurry about answering when you ask them for a contribution,” replied the president, with a cynicism common to persons who collect funds for charitable purposes. “George Wickham sent me twenty-five cents from Denver. When I wrote him a receipt, I said thank you same as Aunt Polly did when the neighbours brought her a piece of beef: ‘Ever so much obleeged, but don’t forget me when you come to kill a pig.’–Now, Mrs. Baxter, you shan’t clean James Bruce’s pew, or what was his before he turned Second Advent. I’ll do that myself, for he used to be in my Sunday-school class.”