Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/247

 new worry in the Trentino. I do not like this Austrian caper, Mrs. Dr. dear.”

“Nor I,” said Mrs. Blythe ruefully. “All the forenoon I preserved rhubarb with my hands and waited for the war news with my soul. When it came I shrivelled. Well, I suppose I must go and get ready for the prayer-meeting, too.”

Every village has its own little unwritten history, handed down from lip to lip through the generations, of tragic, comic and dramatic events. They are told at weddings and festivals, and rehearsed around winter firesides. And in these oral annals of Glen St. Mary the tale of the union prayer-meeting held that night in the Methodist Church was destined to fill an imperishable place.

The union prayer-meeting was Mr. Arnold’s idea. The county battalion, which had been training all winter in Charlottetown, was to leave shortly for overseas. The Four Winds Harbour boys belonging to it from the Glen and over-harbour and Harbour Head and Upper Glen were all home on their last leave and Mr. Arnold thought, properly enough that it would be a fitting thing to hold a union prayer-meeting for them before they went away. Mr. Meredith having agreed, the meeting was announced to be held in the Methodist church. Glen prayer-meetings were not apt to be too well attended but on this particular evening the Methodist church was crowded. Everybody who could go was there. Even Miss Cornelia came—and it was the first time in her life that Miss Cornelia had ever set foot inside a Methodist church. It took no less than a world conflict to bring that about.

“I used to hate Methodists,” said Miss Cornelia