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Chapter II

I

The Millers attended the Granite Congregational Church in Wallbridge. So did the Nawns. The Millers' pew was located on the center aisle about ten rows from the front. The Nawns' pew was located in the gallery over the left transept, next to the last row. Every Sunday, after the benediction had been said, a small and select reception took place in the vicinity of the Millers' pew. The prominent members of the church, and its chief financial supporters, all rented pews in the same general locality. The nave of the Granite Congregational Church seldom emptied under twenty minutes, but the sexton could begin to pick up the hymnals and scattered Ordersof-Service in the galleries and the transepts before the organist had left his loft.

As Sheilah sat in church the next morning with her head bowed gazing at her gloved hands folded in her lap, she wasn't listening to the fine big phrases of the long prayer. She was thinking how like a city the Granite Congregational Church was, with its aisles like streets, and numbered pews like houses, and desirable locations and less desirable. The location of the Nawns' pew in church corresponded to