"Are you ready for the question ?" "Question," said Mr.Hayes, after a few moments' silence, broken by the shuffling of some members in their seats, and by the audible whispering of Mrs.Innes, evidently exhorting her husband to action.
"Then all those in favour of the motion will please--" Then from behind the organ a little voice piped up, "Does this mean, Mr.
Chairman, that we lose our minister ?" It was Miss Quigg, a lady whose years no gallantry could set below forty, for her appearance indicated that she was long past the bloom of her youth.

She was thin, almost to the point of frailness, with sharp, delicately cut features; but the little chin was firm, and a flash of the brown eyes revealed a fiery soul within.

Miss Quigg was the milliner and dressmaker of the village, and was herself a walking model of her own exquisite taste in clothes and hats.

It was only her failing health that had driven her to abandon a much larger sphere than her present position offered, but even here her fame was such as to draw to her little shop customers from the villages round about for many miles.
"Does this mean, sir, that Mr.Dunbar will leave us ?" she repeated.
"Well,--yes, madam--that is, Miss, I suppose, in a way--practically it would amount to that." "Will you tell me yes or no, please," Miss Quigg's neat little figure was all a-quiver to the tips of her hat plumes.
"Well," said the chairman, squirming under the unpleasant experience of being forced to a definite answer, "I suppose,--yes." Miss Quigg turned from the squirming and smiling Mr.Pilley in contempt.
"Then," she said, "I say no.

And I believe there are many here who would say no--and men, too." The wealth of indignation and contemptuous scorn infused into the word by which the difference in sex of the human species was indicated, made those unhappy individuals glance shamefacedly at each other--"only they are too timid, the creatures! or too indifferent." Again there was an exchange of furtive glances and smiles and an uneasy shifting of position on the part of "the creatures." "But if you give them time, Mr.Chairman, I believe they will perhaps get up courage enough to speak." Miss Quigg sat down in her place behind the organ, disappearing quite from view except for the tips of her plumes, whose rapid and rhythmic vibrations were eloquent of the beating of her gallant little heart.
"Exactly so," said the chairman, in confused but hearty acquiescence.
"Perhaps some one will say something." Then Mr.Innes, forced to a change of position by the physical discomfort caused by his wife's prodding, rose and said, "I dinna see the need o' any change.