"Well, did you ever?" commented Sister Poteet, generally.
"Hardly ever," laughed the widow, good-naturedly, "and I don't want to
lose the chance. You know Deacon Hawkins isn't asking somebody every
day to go sleighing with him. I told him I'd go if he would bring me
around here to let you know what had become of me, and so he did. Now,
good-by, and I'll be sure to be present at the next meeting. I have to
hurry because he'll get fidgety."
The widow ran away like a lively schoolgirl. All the sisters watched
her get into the sleigh with the deacon, and resumed the previous
discussion with greatly increased interest.
But little recked the widow and less recked the deacon. He had bought
a new horse and he wanted the widow's opinion of it, for the Widow
Stimson was a competent judge of fine horseflesh. If Deacon Hawkins
had one insatiable ambition it was to own a horse which could fling
its heels in the face of the best that Squire Hopkins drove. In his
early manhood the deacon was no deacon by a great deal. But as the
years gathered in behind him he put off most of the frivolities of
youth and held now only to the one of driving a fast horse.
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