"There, sis, that's the last chore on my list. Bob's milking. Nothing more for me to do but put on my white collar for meeting. Avonlea is more than lively since the evangelist came, ain't it, though!"

 

Mollie Bell nodded. She was curling her hair before the tiny mirror that hung on the whitewashed¹ wall and distorted her round, pink-and-white face into a grotesque² caricature.

 

"Wonder who'll stand up to-night," said Eben reflectively, sitting down on the edge of the wood-box. "There ain't many sinners left in Avonlea—only a few hardened chaps like myself."

 

"You shouldn't talk like that," said Mollie rebukingly³. "What if father heard you?"

 

"Father wouldn't hear me if I shouted it in his ear," returned Eben. "He goes around, these days, like a man in a dream and a mighty⁴ bad dream at that. Father has always been a good man. What's the matter with him?"

 

"I don't know," said Mollie, dropping her voice. "Mother is dreadfully worried over him. And everybody is talking, Eb. It just makes me squirm. Flora⁵ Jane Fletcher asked me last night why father never testified, and him one of the elders. She said the minister was perplexed⁶ about it. I felt my face getting red."

 

"Why didn't you tell her it was no business of hers?" said Eben angrily. "Old Flora Jane had better mind her own business."

 

"But all the folks are talking about it, Eb. And mother is fretting⁷ her heart out over it. Father has never acted like himself since these meetings began. He just goes there night after night, and sits like a mummy, with his head down. And almost everybody else in Avonlea has testified."

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