If it should be borous,
why, we can come out."
The proposition pleased the fancy of the party, and with gay words
and laughter that scarcely ceased at the vestibule, they entered
the place of prayer and lighted down among the sober-visaged,
soberly-dressed worshippers like a flock of tropical birds.
Ida reluctantly followed them. At first she half decided to walk
home alone, but feared to do so. She who had resolved on facing
the "King of Terrors" shrank, with a woman's instinct, from a lonely
walk in the starlight.
She sat in dreary preoccupation a little apart from the others and
paid no more heed to the opening services than to their ill-concealed
merriment.
the minister was away on his August vacation. Prayer-meetings
were out of season, and very few were present. The plain farmer
was trying to conduct the service as well as he could, but it was
evident he would have been much more at ease holding the handle of
a plow or the reins of his rattling team, than a hymn-book. Dr.
Watts and John Wesley might have lost some of their heavenly serenity
could they have heard him read their verses, and certainly only a
long-suffering and merciful God could listen to his prayer.
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