`` Nor I , '' said Mrs. Blythe ruefully . `` All the forenoon I preserved rhubarb with my hands and waited for the war news with my soul . When it came I shrivelled . Well , I suppose I must go and get ready for the prayer-meeting , too . '' Every village has its own little unwritten history , handed down from lip to lip through the generations , of tragic , comic , and dramatic events . They are told at weddings and festivals , and rehearsed around winter firesides . And in these oral annals of Glen St. Mary the tale of the union prayer-meeting held that night in the Methodist Church was destined to fill an imperishable place . The union prayer-meeting was Mr. Arnold 's idea . The county battalion , which had been training all winter in Charlottetown , was to leave shortly for overseas . The Four Winds Harbour boys belonging to it from the Glen and over-harbour and Harbour Head and Upper Glen were all home on their last leave , and Mr. Arnold thought , properly enough , that it would be a fitting thing to hold a union prayer-meeting for them before they went away . Mr. Meredith having agreed , the meeting was announced to be held in the Methodist Church . Glen prayer-meetings were not apt to be too well attended , but on this particular evening the Methodist Church was crowded . Everybody who could go was there . Even Miss Cornelia came -- and it was the first time in her life that Miss Cornelia had ever set foot inside a Methodist Church . It took no less than a world conflict to bring that about . `` I used to hate Methodists , '' said Miss Cornelia calmly , when her husband expressed surprise over her going , `` but I do n't hate them now . There is no sense in hating Methodists when there is a Kaiser or a Hindenburg in the world . '' So Miss Cornelia went . Norman Douglas and his wife went too . And Whiskers-on-the-moon strutted up the aisle to a front pew , as if he fully realized what a distinction he conferred upon the building .
People were somewhat surprised that he should be there , since he usually avoided all assemblages connected XXXXX any way with the war .
at for from in inside on over than that to