“Well, then, what else?” says he, pacific. “Then,” I says, “I wish we could have five minutes of silent prayer. And then right off, the sermon--and no hymn after that at all, but let the sermon end with the benediction--a real cry to God to be with us and to live in us. That’s all.” I had to go out in the kitchen then to empty a bowl of my pitted fruit, and when I come back the minister stood there, smiling. “Ah, Miss Marsh,” he said, “you’ve forgotten a very important thing. You’ve forgotten the collection.” “No,” says I. “No, I haven’t. Except on the days when it’s a real offering for some work for God. I’d take a collection then. The rest of the time I’d have the minister’s salary and the fuel and the kerosene paid for by checks, private.” After he’d gone, I set there going over, miserable, the things I’d said to him about the services that it was his job to do. And though I was miserable enough--I honestly couldn’t be sorry. You know the difference in them two? I was to engage Lavvy Whitmore to lead our singing for the four Sundays, and I went over to see her the next afternoon. She was cleaning the lamps when I stepped up to the kitchen door, so I went right in and sat down at the end of the table, and helped her with the chimneys. She was a pretty little thing--little, but with black eyes that mentioned her thoughts before ever any of the rest of her agreed to announce ’em. And plenty of thoughts, too, Lavvy had. She wasn’t one of the girls that is turned out by the thousands, that wouldn’t recognize their own minds if they was to meet ’em unbeknownst; but one that her mind was cut out, careful, by a pattern part of her own selecting, and not a pattern just laid on to it, haphazard, by the folks that she lived neighbor to, and went with when she went. “Lavvy,” I says, “we want to speak for you to sing to our church the four Sundays in September, when we have special services to get everybody to go, so’s everybody’ll see everybody else going, and go too. Can we? Will you?” “I’ve been spoke for,” says she, “by the White Frame church for the four September Sundays. For the same reason.” “Go on!” I says. “Do you mean to tell me that they’re going to have a competition revival?” “Well,” she says, “they’re going to make an extra effort to get folks out for the four Sundays.” “Copied it off’n us,” I says thoughtful. “Well, I guess the four Sundays can’t be regularly copyrighted by us, can they? But I thought their minister didn’t like revivals?” I says. “Oh, he don’t--Elbert Kinsman don’t,” says Lavvy. “It’s the rest of ’em wants it. He told me he thought it was a mistake.” “That young Elbert Kinsman,” I says, “he loves _folks_. I saw it in his face long ago.” Lavvy went on trimming wicks. “And then the Red Brick church,” says she, “_they’ve_ spoke for me to sing for them for the four Sundays in September too.” “Land of life,” I says, “they haven’t! What on earth have they done that for?”