The Auld Lichts let it pass, but, as Lang Tammas said in private (for, of course, the thing was much discussed at the looms), if you materialize angels in that way, where are you going to stop?
It was on the Fast Days that the Auld Licht kirk showed what it was capable of, and, so to speak, left all the other churches in Thrums far behind.

The Fast came round once every summer, beginning on a Thursday, when all the looms were hushed, and two services were held in the kirk of about three hours' length each.

A minister from another town assisted at these times, and when the service ended the members filed in at one door and out at another, passing on their way Mr.
Dishart and his elders, who dispensed "tokens" at the foot of the pulpit.

Without a token, which was a metal lozenge, no one could take the sacrament on the coming Sabbath, and many a member has Mr.Dishart made miserable by refusing him his token for gathering wild flowers, say, on a Lord's Day (as testified to by another member).

Women were lost who cooked dinners on the Sabbath, or took to coloured ribbons, or absented themselves from church without sufficient cause.