"Harriet," I demanded, "just why did you join Mr. Goodloe's church?"

"Let's see," answered Harriet, as she poised a violet and gave herself

up to introspection.

"Mr. Goodloe?" I asked squarely, and my honesty drew its spark from

hers.

"Mostly," she answered briefly. "And I believe in the church as an

institution," she added, with honest justice to herself.

"I think it is absolutely horrid of you to ask a question like that,

Charlotte," said Nell, as she turned the fretting Suckling over on her

knee and began another series of pats. "We all of us went to church and

Sunday school when we were children."

"Up to the time I left, not a single one of you ever had gone to church

with any kind of regularity and not a one of you had ever supported its

institutions. I've been here less than a week and each one of you has in

some way shown me how bored you are with the relation. That's all the

case I have against your or any church--just that the members are bored.

Also, do any of you get any help in your daily lives, aside from the

emotional pleasure it is to you to hear your minister sing twice a week,

which would be as great or greater if he sang love and waltz songs from

light opera for you?"

And as I asked my question I looked quickly from one to the other of the

four women seated with me under the roof of the Poplars and tried to

search out what was in their hearts. I knew them and their lives with

the cruel completeness it is given to friends to know each other in

small towns like Goodloets and I could probe with a certain touch. And

as they all sat silent with me, each one driven to self-question by my

demand, I threw the flash of a searchlight into each of them. These are

some of the things that stood out in the illumination: Harriet Henderson has always been in love with Mark Morgan, since her

shoe-top-dress days, and she married Roger Henderson because Mark was as

poor as she before the Phosphate Company gave him his managership. Nell

and the babies are the nails driven in her heart every day and she loves

them all passionately. She is only twenty-eight and life will be long

for her. She needs help to live it. Whence will the help come?

Nell married Mark when she was eighteen and has produced a result every

year and a half since. She loves him mildly and he loves her after a

fashion, but her endurance is wearing thin. His mother had seven

children and he thinks that an ideal number, though she was one

generation nearer the pioneer woman and also had a nurse trained in

slavery who was a wizard with children. Mark wants to have a lot of joy

of life and so far he drags poor exhausted Nell with him. It is a

question how long she can stand the social pace and the over-production.

What is going to help her when she breaks down? How will she hold him

faithful while she rears and trains all the kiddies? Where will she get

spirit to love him and work out their salvation? Also Harriet is always

there. Something will have to help Nell. What?




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