Inside the contrast with the older day was even more striking. The church, small as it was, seemed almost empty. The Shenks were there, including Jeannette, as J.W. promptly managed to observe. Father Foltz and his middle-aged daughter stood in their accustomed place; they had come in the venerable sidebar buggy, just as for two decades past. Mother Foltz hadn't been out of the house in years, and among J.W.'s earliest recollections were those of the cottage prayer meetings that he had attended with his father in Mrs. Foltz's speckless sickroom. Then there were the four Newells, and Mrs. Bellamy, and Mr. and Mrs. Haggard with their two little girls, and a few people J.W. did not know--perhaps twenty-five altogether. No wonder the preacher was disheartened, and preached a flavorless sermon. Where were the boys and girls of even a dozen years ago? where the children who began their Sunday school career in the little recess back of the curtain? and where the whole families that once filled the place? Surely, old Deep Creek Church had fallen on evil days. It was a dismal service, with its dreary sermon and its tuneless hymns. After the benediction J.W. shook hands with the preacher, whom he knew slightly, and exchanged greetings with all the old friends. "Well, John Wesley," said Father Foltz, with glum garrulity, "this ain't the church you used to know when you was little. I mind in them times when you folks lived on the farm how we thought we'd have to enlarge the meetinghouse. But it's a good thing we never done it. There's room enough now," and the old man indulged in a mirthless, toothless grimace. The Shenks didn't invite him to dinner; their understanding was finer than that. Pa Shenk just said, "Let me drive out first, John Wesley; I'll go on ahead and open the gate," And J.W. said to Jeannette, "Jump into my car, Jean; it isn't fair to put everybody into Pa Shenk's Ford when mine's younger and nearly empty." So that was that; all regular and comfortable and proper. If Mrs. Newell smiled as she watched them drive away, what of it? She was heard to say to Mrs. Bellamy, "I've known for three years that those two ought to wake up and fall in love with each other, and they've been slower than Father Foltz's old gray mare. But it looks as though they were getting their eyes open at last." At the farm Mrs. Shenk hurried to finish up the dinner preparations, with Jeannette to help. Ben and little Alice contended for J.W.'s favor, until he took Alice on his knee and put one arm about her and the other about her brother, standing by the chair. And Pa Shenk talked about the church. "I reckon I shouldn't complain, John Wesley," he said, "seeing that our Marty is a country preacher, and maybe he'll be having to handle a job like this some time. But I can't believe he will. His letters don't read like it."