I was too shy to eat enough. I’ve got all over THAT.”
“Most men do,” said Miss Cornelia, sewing furiously. Miss Cornelia was not going to sit with idle hands, even on Christmas.
Babies come without any consideration for holidays, and there was one expected in a poverty-stricken household at Glen St. Mary. Miss Cornelia had sent that household a substantial dinner for its little swarm, and so meant to eat her own with a comfortable conscience.
“Well, you know, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, Cornelia,” explained Captain Jim.
“I believe you — when he HAS a heart,” retorted Miss Cornelia. “I suppose that’s why so many women kill themselves cooking — just as poor Amelia Baxter did. She died last Christmas morning, and she said it was the first Christmas since she was married that she didn’t have to cook a big, twenty-plate dinner. It must have been a real pleasant change for her. Well, she’s been dead a year, so you’ll soon hear of Horace Baxter taking notice.”
“I heard he was taking notice already,” said Captain Jim, winking at Gilbert. “Wasn’t he up to your place one Sunday lately, with his funeral blacks on, and a boiled collar?”
“No, he wasn’t. And he needn’t come neither. I could have had him long ago when he was fresh. I don’t want any secondhand goods, believe ME. As for Horace Baxter, he was in financial difficulties a year ago last summer, and he prayed to the Lord for help; and when his wife died and he got her life insurance he said he believed it was the answer to his prayer. Wasn’t that like a man?”
“Have you really proof that he said that, Cornelia?”
“I have the Methodist minister’s word for it — if you call THAT proof. Robert Baxter told me the same thing too, but I admit THAT isn’t evidence. Robert Baxter isn’t often known to tell the truth.”
“Come, come, Cornelia, I think he generally tells the truth, but he changes his opinion so often it sometimes sounds as if he didn’t.”
“It sounds like it mighty often, believe ME. But trust one man to excuse another. I have no use for Robert Baxter. He turned Methodist just because the Presbyterian choir happened to be singing ‘Behold the bridegroom cometh’ for a collection piece when him and Margaret walked up the aisle the Sunday after they were married. Served him right for being late! He always insisted the choir did it on purpose to insult him, as if he was of that much importance. But that family always thought they were much bigger potatoes than they really were. His brother Eliphalet imagined the devil was always at his elbow — but I never believed the devil wasted that much time on him.”
“I — don’t — know,” said Captain Jim thoughtfully. “Eliphalet Baxter lived too much alone — hadn’t even a cat or dog to keep him human. When a man is alone he’s mighty apt to be with the devil — if he ain’t with God. He has to choose which company he’ll keep, I reckon. If the devil always was at Life Baxter’s elbow it must have been because Life liked to have him there.”
“Manlike,” said Miss Cornelia, and subsided into silence over a complicated arrangement of tucks until Captain Jim deliberately stirred her up again by remarking in a casual way:
“I was up to the Methodist church last Sunday morning.”
“You’d better have been home reading your Bible,” was Miss Cornelia’s retort.
“Come, now, Cornelia, I can’t see any harm in going to the Methodist church when there’s no preaching in your own. I’ve been a Presbyterian for seventy-six years, and it isn’t likely my theology will hoist anchor at this late day.”
“It’s setting a bad example,” said Miss Cornelia grimly.
“Besides,” continued wicked Captain Jim, “I wanted to hear some good singing. The Methodists have a good choir; and you can’t deny, Cornelia, that the singing in our church is awful since the split in the choir.”
“What if the singing isn’t good? They’re doing their best, and God sees no difference between the voice of a crow and the voice of a nightingale.”
“Come, come, Cornelia,” said Captain Jim mildly, “I’ve a better opinion of the Almighty’s ear for music than THAT.”
“What caused the trouble in our choir?” asked Gilbert, who was suffering from suppressed laughter.
“It dates back to the new church, three years ago,” answered Captain Jim. “We had a fearful time over the building of that church — fell out over the question of a new site. The two sites wasn’t more’n two hundred yards apart, but you’d have thought they was a thousand by the bitterness of that fight. We was split up into three factions — one wanted the east site and one the south, and one held to the old. It was fought out in bed and at board, and in church and at market. All the old scandals of three generations were dragged out of their graves and aired. Three matches was broken up by it. And the meetings we had to try to settle the question! Cornelia, will you ever forget the one when old Luther Burns got up and made a speech? HE stated his opinions forcibly.”
“Call a spade a spade, Captain. You mean he got red-mad and raked them all, fore and aft. They deserved it too — a pack of incapables. But what would you expect of a committee of men? That building committee held twenty-seven meetings, and at the end of the twenty-seventh weren’t no nearer having a church than when they begun — not so near, for a fact, for in one fit of hurrying things along they’d gone to work and tore the old church down, so there we were, without a church, and no place but the hall to worship in.”
“The Methodists offered us their church, Cornelia.”
“The Glen St. Mary church wouldn’t have been built to this day,” went on Miss Cornelia, ignoring Captain Jim, “if we women hadn’t just started in and took charge. We said WE meant to have a church, if the men meant to quarrel till doomsday, and we were tired of being a laughing-stock for the Methodists. We held ONE meeting and elected a committee and canvassed for subscriptions. We got them, too. When any of the men tried to sass us we told them they’d tried for two years to build a church and it was our turn now. We shut them up close, believe ME, and in six months we had our church. Of course, when the men saw we were determined they stopped fighting and went to work, manlike, as soon as they saw they had to, or quit bossing. Oh, women can’t preach or be elders; but they can build churches and scare up the money for them.”
“The Methodists allow women to preach,” said Captain Jim.
Miss Cornelia glared at him.
“I never said the Methodists hadn’t common sense, Captain. What I say is, I doubt if they have much religion.”
“I suppose you are in favor of votes for women, Miss Cornelia,” said Gilbert.
“I’m not hankering after the vote, believe ME,” said Miss Cornelia scornfully. “I know what it is to clean up after the men. But some of these days, when the men realize they’ve got the world into a mess they can’t get it out of, they’ll be glad to give us the vote, and shoulder their troubles over on us. That’s THEIR scheme. Oh, it’s well that women are patient, believe ME!”
“What about Job?” suggested Captain Jim.
“Job! It was such a rare thing to find a patient man that when one was really discovered they were determined he
