Anne's House of Dreams - L. M. Montgomery [44]
‘Besides,’ continued wicked Captain Jim, ‘I wanted to hear some good singing. The Methodists have a good choir; and you can’t deny, Cornelia, that the singing in our church is awful since the split in the choir?’
‘What if the singing isn’t good? They’re doing their best, and God sees no difference between the voice of a crow and the voice of a nightingale.’
‘Come, come, Cornelia,’ said Captain Jim mildly, ‘I’ve a better opinion of the Almighty’s ear for music than that.’
‘What caused the trouble in our choir?’ asked Gilbert, who was suffering from suppressed laughter.
‘It dates back to the new church, three years ago,’ answered Captain Jim. ‘We had a fearful time over the building of that church – fell out over the question of a new site. The two sites wasn’t more’n two hundred yards apart, but you’d have thought they was a thousand by the bitterness of that fight. We was split up into three factions – one wanted the east site and one the south, and one held to the old. It was fought out in bed and at board, and in church and at market. All the old scandals of three generations were dragged out of their graves and aired. 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, when the men saw we were determined they stopped fighting and went to work, man-like, as soon as they saw they had to, or quit bossing. Oh, women can’t preach or be elders; but they can build churches and scare up the money for them.’
‘The Methodists allow women to preach,’ said Captain Jim.
Miss Cornelia glared at him.
‘I never said the Methodists hadn’t common sense, Captain. What I say is, I doubt if they have much religion.’
‘I suppose you are in favour of votes for women, Miss Cornelia,’ said Gilbert.
‘I’m not hankering after the vote, believe me,’ said Miss Cornelia scornfully. ‘I know what it is to clean up after the men. But some of these days, when the men realize they’ve got the world into a mess they can’t get it out of, they’ll be glad to gives us the vote, and shoulder their troubles over on us. That’s their scheme. Oh, it’s well that women are patient, believe me!’
‘What about Job?’ suggested Captain Jim.
‘Job! It was such a rare thing to find a patient man that when one was really discovered they were determined he shouldn’t be forgotten,’ retorted Miss Cornelia triumphantly. ‘Anyhow, the virtue doesn’t go with the name. There never was such an impatient man born as old Job Taylor over harbour.’
‘Well, you know, he had a good deal to try him, Cornelia. Even you can’t defend his wife. I always remember what old William MacAllister said of her at her funeral, “There’s nae doot she was a Chreestian wumman, but she had the de’il’s own temper.”’
‘I suppose she was trying,’ admitted Miss Cornelia reluctantly,