The Church Social was strictly a villagers’ affair. No one came from the great houses and the clergyman only looked in once during the evening. The presence of the curate and Sunday-School teachers guaranteed propriety. When the mothers had assisted with clearing away the tea and the long trestle tables had been removed, they seated themselves around the walls to watch the games. After Postman’s Knock and Musical Chairs and Here we go round the Mulberry Bush, a large ring was formed for Dropping the Handkerchief and the fun of the evening began. “I wrote a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it. One of you has picked it up and put it in your pocket,” chanted the odd man or girl out as they circled the ring, handkerchief in hand, until they came to the back of the person they wished to choose and placed the handkerchief on his or her shoulder. The chase which followed took so long, round and round the ring and always eventually out of one of the several doors, that two separate handkerchiefs kept two couples going in the Church Social version of the game. There was supposed to be no kissing, as it was a Church function, but when the pursuer caught the pursued somewhere beyond the door with a smudged roller towel upon it, who could say what happened. Perhaps the youth sketched a stage kiss. Perhaps not.

As the evening went on, the women and girls and young men and boys in the ring whirled hand in hand, faster and faster, the girls’ blue and pink and green skirts standing out like bells and the young men’s faces getting redder, until some one called out, “Time for ‘Auld Lang Syne’!” and hands were crossed and the old song was sung and people went home, in families or couples, according to age. Dancing would have been better perhaps, but Dropping the Handkerchief served much the same purpose in that unsophisticated day.

From such festivities some of the older girls were seen home by young men. The engaged, of course, were already provided with an escort, and for that office to certain unattached pretty and popular girls there was keen rivalry. The young and not in any way outstanding girls, such as Laura, had to find their way home through the darkness alone, or join up with some family or group of friends which happened to be going their way.