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Plain, but respectable dwellings, with numerous out-buildings, orchards and fruit-trees, fences carefully preserved, a pains-taking tillage, good roads, and here and there a "meeting-house," gave the fork an air of rural and moral beauty that, aided by the water by which it was so nearly surrounded, contributed greatly to relieve the monotony of so dead a level.
"It is Gran'ther Wattles's duty to oversee the congregation at home as well as in the meeting-house." Nancy looked at her trencher and said no more, but she thought there was already enough to bear without having Gran'ther Wattles added to her troubles. Daniel, meanwhile, had attacked his porringer of clams, and in his excitement over the journey was gobbling at a fearful rate.
Beyond the brook rises the hill, on the slope of which the meeting-house once stood, and where wild strawberries grew as they grow to-day. A dense and unbroken circle of woods must have surrounded the settlement, and cut off many glimpses of river and hill that to- day make the drives about Andover full of surprise and charm. Slight changes came in the first hundred years.
There are, besides, two other places of worship in the village; but neither is built upon the square; and when, at Belfield, the meeting-house is mentioned, the speaker is understood to indicate by that title the edifice which stands between the academy and the court-house, and not the plain, square structure, with neither steeple nor bell, in which the Baptists assemble for worship, nor the little white Methodist chapel in the lane, with green blinds to its windows, and a little toy of a turret, scarcely bigger than a martin-box, upon its shingled roof.
The old gentleman doesn't go to any church; and the young lady inclines to the Perryville meeting-house the parson there is a nice boy." "She is an attractive young creature," said the doctor, smiling at some pleasant memory; "the kind of girl a man would like to have for a daughter. But did you ever know such an old-fashioned little thing!"
There are perpetual complaints of partiality even hints that bribery had been at work in this "seating the meeting-house," and the committee chosen found it so disagreeable a task that Dudley Bradstreet, when in due time his turn came to serve, protested against being compelled to it, and at last revolted altogether.
This old glass was an heirloom of the Feltons, a relic that had come down with many traditions, bringing its frail fabric safely through all the perils of time, that had shattered empires; and, if space sufficed, I could tell many stories of this curious vase, which was said, in its time, to have been the instrument both of the Devil's sacrament in the forest, and of the Christian in the village meeting-house.
Nevertheless, when the eventful morning arrived she was bitterly disappointed. She had set her heart on having the church bell rung, and overlooked the fact that the meeting-house bell was cracked, till Joe reminded her. Then the weather was unexpectedly chilly. A damp fog, not yet dispersed by the sun, hung over the barely awakened village, and the little flower-girl shivered.
Brice pityingly, and finally led him in silence past the picket fence and the New England-looking meeting-house opposite until they came to the great square on which the State House squatted.
The engineer was richer by five dollars, and the son of a railroad president is a privileged character, anyway. Yes, here was Brampton, and in spite of the haze the sun had never shone so brightly on the terraced steeple of the meeting-house. He leaped out of the cab almost before the engine had stopped, and beamed upon everybody on the platform, even upon Mr. Dodd, who chanced to be there.
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