After the morning service they have an "hour's intermission," as the preacher calls it; during which the old men gather on a sunny side of the building, and, after shaking hands all around, and asking after the "folks" at home, they enjoy a quiet talk about the crops. One man, for instance, with a twist in his nose, would say, "It's raether a growin' season;" and another would reply, "Tolerable, but potatoes is feelin' the wet badly." The stout deacon approves this opinion, and confirms it by blowing his nose very powerfully.
Two or three of the more worldly-minded ones will perhaps stroll over to a neighbor's barnyard, and take a look at his young stock, and talk of prices, and whittle a little; and very likely some two of them will make a conditional "swop" of "three likely ye'rlings" for a pair of "two-year-olds."
The youngsters are fond of getting out into the graveyard, and comparing jackknives, or talking about the schoolmaster or the menagerie, or, it may be, of some prospective "travel" in the fall,--either to town, or perhaps to the "sea-shore."
Afternoon service hangs heavily; and the tall chorister is by no means so blithe, or so majestic in the toss of his head, as in the morning. A boy in the next box tries to provoke you into familiarity by dropping pellets of gingerbread through the bars of the pew; but as you are not accustomed to that way of making acquaintance, you decline all overtures.
After the service is finished, the wagons, that have been disposed on either side of the road, are drawn up before the door. The old Squire meantime is sure to have a little chat with the parson before he leaves; in the course of which the parson takes occasion to say that his wife is a little ailing,--"a slight touch," he thinks, "of the rheumatiz." One of the children too has been troubled with the "summer complaint" for a day or two; but he thinks that a dose of catnip, under Providence, will effect a cure. The younger and unmarried men, with red wagons flaming upon bright yellow wheels, make great efforts to drive off in the van; and they spin frightfully near some of the fat, sour-faced women, who remark in a quiet, but not very Christian tone, that they "fear the elder's sermon hasn't done the young bucks much good." It is much to be feared in truth that it has not.