"While I was a-drinkin' down her coffee out of that measly leetle cup,"
said the deacon, "she was that brazen! Acted like she'd took a fancy to
me," he said, with a sprucing back of his old shoulders.

"Got all the wiles of that there woman that danced off the head of John
the Baptist," said the elder, grimly. "So she dasted even to tempt a
deacon of the church."

"She didn't tempt me none," snapped the deacon, "but I lay she was
willin'."

"I'll venture," said Old Man Bogle, with a light in his rheumy eyes,
"that she hain't no stranger to wearin' _tights._"

"Shame!" said the elder and the deacon, in a breath. And then, from the
deacon, in a tone which might have been a reflection of lofty
satisfaction in a virtue, or which might have been something quite
different, "I've read of them there tights, Elder, but I kin say with a
clear conscience that I hain't never witnessed a pair of 'em."

"My nevvy took me to a show in Boston wunst," said Old Man Bogle,
tentatively, but he was silenced immediately and sternly.

"How kin a man combat evil," he demanded, "if he hain't familiar with
the wiles of it?"

"He kin set his face to the right," said the elder, "and tread the
path."