“I rather guess _she_ has,” smiled Sister Poteet, the grocer’s better half, who had taken an afternoon off from the store in order to be present. “Or is willing to,” added Sister Maria Cartridge, a spinster still possessing faith, hope, and charity, notwithstanding she had been on the waiting list a long time. “Really, now,” exclaimed little Sister Green, the doctor’s wife, “do you think it is the deacon who needs urging?” “It looks that way to me,” Sister Poteet did not hesitate to affirm. “Well, I heard Sister Clark say that she had heard him call her ‘Kitty’ one night when they were eating ice-cream at the Mite Society,” Sister Candish, the druggist’s wife, added to the fund of reliable information on hand. “‘Kitty,’ indeed!” protested Sister Spicer. “The idea of anybody calling Kate Stimson ‘Kitty’! The deacon will talk that way to ’most any woman, but if she let him say it to her more than once, she must be getting mighty anxious, I think.” “Oh,” Sister Candish hastened to explain, “Sister Clark didn’t say she had heard him say it twice.’” “Well, I don’t think she heard him say it once,” Sister Spicer asserted with confidence. “I don’t know about that,” Sister Poteet argued. “From all I can see and hear I think Kate Stimson wouldn’t object to ’most anything the deacon would say to her, knowing as she does that he ain’t going to say anything he shouldn’t say.” “And isn’t saying what he should,” added Sister Green, with a sly snicker, which went around the room softly. “But as I was saying—” Sister Spicer began, when Sister Poteet, whose rocker, near the window, commanded a view of the front gate, interrupted with a warning, “’Sh-’sh.” “Why shouldn’t I say what I wanted to when—” Sister Spicer began. “There she comes now,” explained Sister Poteet, “and as I live the deacon drove her here in his sleigh, and he’s waiting while she comes in. I wonder what next,” and Sister Poteet, in conjunction with the entire society, gasped and held their eager breaths, awaiting the entrance of the subject of conversation. Sister Spicer went to the front door to let her in, and she was greeted with the greatest cordiality by everybody. “We were just talking about you and wondering why you were so late coming,” cried Sister Poteet. “Now take off your things and make up for lost time. There’s a pair of pants over there to be cut down to fit that poor little Snithers boy.” The excitement and curiosity of the society were almost more than could be borne, but never a sister let on that she knew the deacon was at the gate waiting. Indeed, as far as the widow could discover, there was not the slightest indication that anybody had ever heard there was such a person as the deacon in existence. “Oh,” she chirruped, in the liveliest of humors, “you will have to excuse me for to-day. Deacon Hawkins overtook me on the way here, and here said I had simply got to go sleigh-riding with him. He’s waiting out at the gate now.”