This was duly reported to him, and gave him food for thought.
Another promised the savings from sleigh-rides that he had intended to take, and another gravely wrote down in Ruth Jennings' note-book: "Harry Matthews, $1.10; the price of two new neckties and a bottle of hair oil!" There was more than fun to some of these entries. Some of the boys could not have kept their pledges if there had not been these queer little sacrifices.
One evening there was a new development. Ruth Jennings brought the news. The much-abused, long-suffering, neglectful sexton of the half-alive church notified the startled trustees that he had received a louder call to the church on the other corner, and must leave them. It really was startling news; for bad as he had been, not one in the little village could be thought of who would be likely to supply his place.
Ruth reported her father as filled with consternation.
"I wish I were a man!" savagely announced Anna Graves, "then I would offer myself for the position at once. It is as easy to make three dollars a month in that way as it is in any other that I know of."
That was the first development of the new idea. Miss Benedict bestowed a sudden glance, half of amusement, half of pleasure, on her aspiring pupil, and was silent.
"If it were not for the fires," was Nettie Burdick's slow-spoken sentence, rather as if she were thinking aloud than talking. That is the way the idea began to grow.
Then Ruth Jennings, with a sudden dash, as she was very apt to enter into a subject:
"It is no harder to make fires in church stoves than it is in sitting-room ones. I've done that often. I say, girls, let's do it!"
Every one of them knew that she meant the church stoves instead of the sitting-room ones, and that was the way that the idea took on flesh, and stood up before them.
There followed much eager discussion and of course some demurs. Nothing ever was done yet, or ever will be, without somebody objecting to it. At least, this was what Ruth said; and she added that she could not, to save her life, help being a little more settled in a determination after she had heard somebody oppose it a trifle.
However, the trustees opposed it more than a trifle. They were amazed. Such an innovation on the time-honored ways of South Plains had never been heard of before. Argument ran high. The half-doubtful girls came squarely over to the aggressive side, and waxed eloquent over the plan. It was carried at last, as Miss Benedict, looking on and laughing, told the girls she knew it would be.