Page:Scarlet Sister Mary (1928).pdf/243

 Bury-league members don't care how much the preacher preaches sinners to Hell. They are too brazen to care.

They think about nothing but marching and speaking and singing, and wearing white gloves. Women who are hardly decent put on white waists and black skirts and black sailor hats, and journey round and round people's graves, saying words that are written in a book. Strange words instead of the words Jesus told people to say. Before the dust settles they put up a fifteen-dollar tombstone with your name on it. And the dues are high. Every time somebody dies you pay an extra tax of fifty cents. People die fast these days too. They don't wait for plain sickness to cut them down. They run around and find ways to meet sudden death.

He had told Doll all these things as plain as he could. He told her again this morning but instead of listening to him she stuck out her mouth. The way she did made him hot all over and he all but slapped her then, but he didn't. He just told her to pull in her lip and keep it pulled in. Then, Doll jumped up and said he had better pull in his own. He. Andrew, her lawful husband, and a deacon in the church, too, had to take such slack talk as that from Doll.

Mary turned aside to smile, but she made her