Back Mistress Pat
Chapters (72)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. THE FIRST YEAR
  6. CHAPTER 1
  7. CHAPTER 2
  8. CHAPTER 3
  9. CHAPTER 4
  10. CHAPTER 5
  11. CHAPTER 6
  12. CHAPTER 7
  13. CHAPTER 8
  14. CHAPTER 9
  15. CHAPTER 10
  16. CHAPTER 11
  17. CHAPTER 12
  18. THE SECOND YEAR
  19. CHAPTER 13
  20. CHAPTER 14
  21. CHAPTER 15
  22. CHAPTER 16
  23. CHAPTER 17
  24. CHAPTER 18
  25. CHAPTER 19
  26. CHAPTER 20
  27. CHAPTER 21
  28. CHAPTER 22
  29. THE THIRD YEAR
  30. CHAPTER 23
  31. CHAPTER 24
  32. CHAPTER 25
  33. CHAPTER 26
  34. THE FOURTH YEAR
  35. CHAPTER 27
  36. CHAPTER 28
  37. CHAPTER 29
  38. CHAPTER 30
  39. CHAPTER 31
  40. CHAPTER 32
  41. THE FIFTH YEAR
  42. CHAPTER 33
  43. CHAPTER 34
  44. THE SIXTH YEAR
  45. CHAPTER 35
  46. CHAPTER 36
  47. CHAPTER 37
  48. THE SEVENTH YEAR
  49. CHAPTER 38
  50. CHAPTER 39
  51. CHAPTER 40
  52. CHAPTER 41
  53. CHAPTER 42
  54. CHAPTER 43
  55. THE EIGHTH YEAR
  56. CHAPTER 44
  57. CHAPTER 45
  58. CHAPTER 46
  59. THE NINTH YEAR
  60. CHAPTER 47
  61. CHAPTER 48
  62. THE TENTH YEAR
  63. CHAPTER 49
  64. CHAPTER 50
  65. CHAPTER 51
  66. CHAPTER 52
  67. THE ELEVENTH YEAR
  68. CHAPTER 53
  69. CHAPTER 54
  70. CHAPTER 55
  71. About the Author
  72. Back Cover

Rae contributed a bit to the comedy of living that summer by having a frightful attack of schoolgirl veal love, the object of which was a young evangelist who was holding revival meetings in Mr. Jonas Monkman’s big barn. He did not approve of “organized churches” and these services were in the nature of a free-for-all and, being very lively of their kind, attracted crowds, some of whom came to scoff and remained to pray. For it could not be denied that the young preacher had a very marked power for stirring the emotions of his hearers to concert pitch. He had an exceedingly handsome, marble-white face with rather too large, too soft, too satiny brown eyes and long, crinkly, mahogany-hued hair, sweeping back in a mane from what Rae once incautiously said was “a noble brow,” and a remarkably caressing, wooing voice, expressive of everything. The teenagers went down like ninepins before him. A choir was collected, consisting of everybody in the two Glens who could be persuaded to function. Rae, who sang sweetly, was leading soprano, looking like the very rose of song as she caroled with her eyes turned heavenward…or at least towards the banners of cobwebs hanging from the roof of the barn. She went every night, gave up teasing to be allowed to wear knickerbockers around home, and discarded costume earrings because the evangelist referred to jewelry as “gauds…all gauds.” She was tormented terribly because of her “case” on the preacher, but she gave as good as she got and nobody except Pat thought it was anything but a passing crush. For that matter, all the girls were more or less in love with him and it was difficult to tell where love left off and religion began, as Elder Robinson remarked sarcastically. But Elder Robinson did not approve of the revivals conducted by itinerant evangelists…“go-preachers” he called them. And Rae and her ilk considered Elder Robinson a hide-bound old fossil. Even when Jedidiah Madison of Silverbridge, who hadn’t been inside of a church for years, wandered into the barn one night and was saved in three minutes Elder Robinson was still incredulous of any good thing. “Let us see if it lasts,” he was reported to have said…and added that he had just been reading of a very successful evangelist who had turned out to be a bank bandit. Pat had no fear that Mr. Wheeler was a bandit but she detested him and was as puzzled as alarmed over Rae’s infatuation.