CHRISTMAS AT FOUR WINDS
139
Three matches was broken up by it. And the meetings we had to try to settle the question! Cornelia, will you ever forget the one when old Luther Burns got up and made a speech? He stated his opinions forcibly.”
“Call a spade a spade, Captain. You mean he got red-mad and raked them all, fore and aft. They deserved it too—a pack of incapables. But what would you expect of a committee of men? That building committee held twenty-seven meetings, and at the end of the twenty-seventh weren’t no nearer having a church than when they begun—not so near, for a fact, for in one fit of hurrying things along they’d gone to work and tore the old church down, so there we were, without a church, and no place but the hall to worship in.”
“The Methodists offered us their church, Cornelia.”
“The Glen St. Mary church wouldn’t have been built to this day,” went on Miss Cornelia, ignoring Captain Jim, “if we women hadn’t just started in and took charge. We said we meant to have a church, if the men meant to quarrel till doomsday, and we were tired of being a laughing-stock for the Methodists. We held one meeting and elected a committee and canvassed for subscriptions. We got them, too. When any of the men tried to sass us we told them they’d tried for two years to build a church and it was our turn now. We shut them up close, believe me, and in six months we had our church. Of course,