“Do you feel sick, Missy?” she asked anxiously.
“Are you sure? You ate so much at dinner. Maybe you didn't take a long enough nap.”
But grandma insisted on feeling her forehead--her hands. They were hot.
“I think I'd better put you to bed for a little while,” said grandma. “You're feverish. And if you're not better by night, you mustn't go to the meeting.”
Missy's heart sank, weighted with a new fear. It would be an unbearable calamity to miss going to the meeting. For, that night, a series of “revivals” were to start at the Methodist Church; and, though father was a Presbyterian (to oblige mother), grandpa and grandma were Methodists and would go every night; and so long as mother was away, she could go to meeting with them. In the fervour of the new religious feeling she craved sanctified surroundings.
So, though she didn't feel at all sick and though she wanted desperately to make paper-flowers, she docilely let herself be put to bed. Anyway, perhaps it was just a penance sent to her by our Lord, to make atonement for her sin.
By supper-time grandma agreed that she seemed well enough to go. Throughout the meal Pete, who was wearing an aloof and serious manner, refrained from looking at her, and she strived to keep her own anxious gaze away from him. He wasn't going to the meeting with the other three.
Just as the lingering June twilight was beginning to darken--the most peaceful hour of the day--Missy walked off sedately between her grandparents. She was wearing her white “best dress.” It seemed appropriate that your best clothes should be always involved in the matter of church going; that the spiritual beatification within should be reflected by the garments without.
The Methodist church in Cherryvale prided itself that it was not “new-fangled.” It was not nearly so pretentious in appearance as was the Presbyterian church. Missy, in her heart, preferred stained-glass windows and their glorious reflections, as an asset to religion; but at night services you were not apt to note that deficiency.
She sat well up front with her grandparents, as befitted their position as pillars of the church, and from this vantage had a good view of the proceedings. She could see every one in the choir, seated up there behind the organ on the side platform. Polly Currier was in the choir; she wasn't a Methodist, but she had a flute-like soprano voice, and the Methodists--whom all the town knew had “poor singing”--had overstepped the boundaries of sectarianism for this revival. Polly looked like an angel in pink lawn and rose-wreathed leghorn hat; she couldn't know that Missy gazed upon her with secret adoration as a creature of Romance--one who had been kissed! Missy continued to gaze at Polly during the preliminary songs--tunes rather disappointing, not so beautiful as Missy's own favourite hymns--till the preacher appeared.