Miss Julia Stands Her Ground by Ann B. Ross

Marie stared at me for a minute, then she doubled over, laughing. Glancing behind to see if she’d wakened Little Lloyd, she held herself in check and walked over to me, her eyes dancing with mischief.
    Leaning close, she whispered, “It’s not that kind of passion, Miss Julia. It’s the other kind.”
    â€œI don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œOh, you do, too,” she said, giving me a light tap on the arm. “And if you don’t, I’m going to get J.D. to explain a few things to Sam.”

Chapter 10

    I dismissed Hazel Marie’s indelicate remark, knowing how she enjoyed teasing me. She was getting as bad as Mr. Pickens, who lived to shock and embarrass me. Nonetheless, I felt it incumbent upon me to be in attendance at the party. Especially since Tina Doland had commandeered my living room to push her wares, whatever they were.
    To tell the truth, Tina had never been one of my favorite people. At one time she had run with a fast and loose crowd, and her reputation had suffered for it. Her husband, Tommy Doland, worked for a large construction company of some kind, and he was forever winning trips to Las Vegas and Atlantic City, which just goes to show. Somewhere along the line, though, both of them had reverted to their earlier religious upbringing, and they’d done it with a vengeance.
    Now, you wouldn’t find a more active couple in any church in town. Whatever program or committee or slogan or activity Dr. James Dobson or their Baptist preacher came up with, Tommy and Tina were right there in the forefront. I didn’t especially like to be around them, if you want to know the truth, especially Tina, since I was on her call list for all her requests for donations. And I wasn’t even a member of her church.
    Besides, when you’re proclaiming the benefits of a simple andgodly family life, your mouth shouldn’t be caked with lip liner, lipstick, and lip gloss. And if you’re forever witnessing to the joys of submission to your husband, you shouldn’t be wearing dresses too short and your pants too tight. Of course, Hazel Marie wore hers that way, but that was different. Hazel Marie didn’t flaunt herself before other people’s husbands the way Tina did.
    Anyway, the word was out that whatever had changed Tina, it hadn’t completely taken hold. But who am I to question anyone’s spiritual condition? Maybe she’d had another conversion experience. Baptists are known for that, you know. And if that was true, I would give her the benefit of the doubt. I’d keep my opinions to myself until she proved otherwise. I don’t believe in talking about people, anyway.
    Still, I was more than a little uneasy about the approaching party. I didn’t like the high-handed way it had been moved to my house just to accommodate Hazel Marie, who was known to have plenty of spending money. That was enough to put me off, right there.
    I just wished I knew what Tina would be selling. Anything called a passion party conjured up any number of possibilities, Hazel Marie’s intimations notwithstanding, because that was too far-fetched for me to believe. Maybe Tina planned to introduce some new weight program that featured passion fruit as a calorie eater. Or maybe she was into physical fitness and had warm-up suits for sale. People who exercise a lot can be quite passionate about it, I understand. Then again, it could be a course on how to have a passion for winning souls, and she’d have study guides and books for sale.
    That’s probably what it was, since Pastor Ledbetter occasionally whipped up a sermon exhorting us to put some passion in our spiritual lives.
    On the other hand, it was hard to tell what Tina had in mind, for our local Baptists could work up a missionizing fervor for just about anything. It always brought me up short to see somethinglike Workout with Jesus on a marquee in front of a church, because I