She felt cheated and very sad when, at last, the preacher bade the repentant ones stand up again. Evidently she hadn't repented hard enough. Very soberly she walked back to the pew and took her place between grandpa and grandma. They looked rather sober, too; she wondered if they, also, had had trouble with their souls.
Then Brother Poole bade the repentant sinners to “stand up and testify.” One or two of the older sinners, who had repented before, rose first to show how this was done. And then some of the younger ones, after being urged, followed example. Sobbing, they testified as to their depth of sin and their sense of forgiveness, while Brother Poole intermittently cut in with staccato exclamations such as “Praise the Lord!” and “My Redeemer Liveth!”
Missy was eager to see whether grandpa and grandma would stand up and testify. When neither of them did so, she didn't know whether she was more disappointed or relieved. Perhaps their silence denoted that their souls had been born anew quite easily. Or again--! She sighed; her soul, at all events, had proved a failure.
She was silent on the way home. Grandpa and grandma held her two hands clasped in theirs and over her head talked quietly. She was too dejected to pay much attention to what they were saying; caught only scattered, meaningless phrases: “Of course that kind of frenzy is sincere but--” “Simple young things--” “No more idea of sin or real repentance--”
But Missy was engrossed with her own dismal thoughts. The blood of the Lamb had passed her by.
And that night, for the first time in three nights, the grace of God didn't flow in on the flood of moonlight through her window. She tossed on her unhallowed pillow in troubled dreams. Once she cried out in sleep, and grandma came hurrying in with a candle. Grandma sat down beside her--what was this she was saying about “green-apple pie”? Missy wished to ask her about it--green-apple pie--green-apple pie--Before she knew it she was off to sleep again.
It was the next morning while she was still lying in bed, that Missy made the Great Resolve. That hour is one when big Ideas--all kinds of unusual thoughts--are very apt to come. When you're not yet entirely awake; not taken up with trivial, everyday things. Your mind, then, has full swing.