They 're doing their best , and God sees no difference between the voice of a crow and the voice of a nightingale . '' `` Come , come , Cornelia , '' said Captain Jim mildly , `` I 've a better opinion of the Almighty 's ear for music than THAT . '' `` What caused the trouble in our choir ? '' asked Gilbert , who was suffering from suppressed laughter . `` It dates back to the new church , three years ago , '' answered Captain Jim . `` We had a fearful time over the building of that church -- fell out over the question of a new site . The two sites was n't more 'n two hundred yards apart , but you 'd have thought they was a thousand by the bitterness of that fight . We was split up into three factions -- one wanted the east site and one the south , and one held to the old . It was fought out in bed and at board , and in church and at market . All the old scandals of three generations were dragged out of their graves and aired . Three matches was broken up by it . And the meetings we had to try to settle the question ! Cornelia , will you ever forget the one when old Luther Burns got up and made a speech ? HE stated his opinions forcibly . '' `` Call a spade a spade , Captain . You mean he got red-mad and raked them all , fore and aft . They deserved it too -- a pack of incapables . But what would you expect of a committee of men ? That building committee held twenty-seven meetings , and at the end of the twenty-seventh were n't no nearer having a church than when they begun -- not so near , for a fact , for in one fit of hurrying things along they 'd gone to work and tore the old church down , so there we were , without a church , and no place but the hall to worship in . '' `` The Methodists offered us their church , Cornelia . ''
`` The Glen St. Mary church would n't have been built to this day , '' went on Miss Cornelia , ignoring Captain XXXXX , `` if we women had n't just started in and took charge .
Almighty Burns Captain Cornelia Gilbert Jim Methodists incapables market twenty-seventh