"H'm! I shouldn't wonder if they wanted you to promise to sit beside the minister, so that all the susceptible young men might be coaxed to church and then shaken over the pit and dragged into the fold. Caleb and the minister have long heads." "Don't be ridiculous! What they ask is that you'll have our piano moved to the church, and that you'll play the music for the hymns. There's to be a lot of singing, and the church hasn't any instrumental music, you know, and Caleb has been greatly impressed by your playing." "Well, I'll be--I don't know what. Old fools! I wish they'd asked me direct! They'd have got a sharp, unmistakable 'NO!'" "So they said; that was the reason they came to me." "And you said--" "That I'd consult you, and that if for any reason you felt that you must decline, I would play for them." "Grace--Somerton!" "Why shouldn't I? I often played the melodeon for the choir in our village church before I went to New York." "Did you, indeed? But I might have imagined it, for there seems to be nothing that you can't do, or won't attempt. But let us see where we are. You've promised, practically, that they shall have the music; if I decline to play, they'll think I'm stuck up, or something of which, for business' sake, I can't afford to be suspected. Besides, when I married you I made some vows that weren't in the service, and one of them was that I never would shift any distasteful duty upon my wife. On the other hand, these Methodists are a literal lot of people. They've wanted me to become a class-leader because Uncle Jethro was one. I believe the duties are to inflict spiritual inquisition every Sunday upon specified people in the presence of one another. I escaped only by explaining that I was not a member of their denomination. But give them an inch and they'll take an ell. If I play for them that night, they'll expect me to do it the next, and again and again, probably every Sunday, and I certainly shan't have our piano jogged once a week over frozen roads, with the nearest tuner at a city seventy-five miles away." "Then let me tell them that you won't allow them to be disappointed, but that as you've not been accustomed to play for church singing, and I have, that I will play for them." "That means that every one in the church will stare at you, which will make your husband feel wretchedly uncomfortable. Aside from that, you'll distract attention from the minister; so although I know that you personally are a means of grace--Grace, itself, indeed, ha, ha!--the effect of the sermon won't be worth any more than a bag of corn-husks." "Oh, Phil! don't imagine that everybody sees me through your eyes. Besides, except while playing I shall sit demurely on a front bench, with my back to the congregation."