“My dear Miss Abigail, your zeal does your heart credit, and your management of the trustees proves you an unsuspected diplomat; but as a friend, and, believe me, a disinterested friend, let me warn you that you are contending against irresistible forces.  You can no more resuscitate your old Greenford than you can any other dead body.  You have kept the church from my clutches, it is true, though for that matter I wouldn’t have offered to buy it if I hadn’t thought no one cared about it—­but what do you mean to do with it now you have it?  You cannot bring back the old Greenford families from their well-paid work in Johnsonville to sit in those rescued pews, or read in your deserted library, or send their children to your empty schoolhouse.  You tell me they are loyal to their old home, and love to come back here for visits.  Is that strange?  Greenford is a charming village set in the midst of beautiful mountains, and Johnsonville is a raw factory town in a plain.  But they cannot live on picturesque scenery or old associations.  The laws of economics are like all other laws of nature, inevitable in their action and irresistible in—­”

Miss Abigail gave the grampus snort which had been her great-grandfather’s war-cry.  “Hoo!  You’re like all other book folks!  You give things such long names you scare yourselves!  I haven’t got anything to do with economics, nor it with me.  It’s a plain question as to whether the church my ancestors built and worshipped in is to be sold.  There’s nothing so inevitable in that, let me tell you.  Laws of nature—­fiddlesticks!  How about the law of gravity?  Don’t I break that every time I get up gumption enough to raise my hand to my head!”

Mr. Horton looked at the belligerent old woman with the kindest smile of comprehension.  “Ah, I know how hard it is for you.  In another way I have been through the same bitter experience.  My home, my real home, where my own people are, is out in a wind-swept little town on the Nebraska prairies.  But I cannot live there because it is too far from my world of artists and art patrons.  I tried it once, but the laws of supply and demand work for all alike.  I gave it up.  Here I am, you see.  You can’t help such things.  You’d better follow on to Johnsonville now and not embitter the last of your life with a hopeless struggle.”

Miss Abigail fairly shouted at him her repudiation of his ideas.  “Not while there is a breath in me!  My folks were all soldiers.”

“But even soldiers surrender to overpowering forces.”

“Hoo!  Hoo!  How do they know they’re overpowering till they’re overpowered!  How do they dare surrender till they’re dead!  How do they know that if they hold out just a little longer they won’t get reenforcements!”

Mr. Horton was a little impatient of his old friend’s unreason.  “My dear Miss Abigail, you have brains. Use them!  What possible reinforcements can you expect?”