on the world
didn't improve much. People got good on Sunday, and then it had to go
and be Monday. He had an idea that if Sunday could be followed by some
other day, preferably Saturday, there would be more happiness and virtue
in the world. Mrs. Pepperall used to say that her boy was quite a
ph'losopher in his way. Mr. Pepperall said he was a hopeless loafer and
spent more time deciding whether he'd ought to do this or that than it
would have taken to do 'em both twice. Whereupon Mrs. Pepperall, whose
maiden name was Boody--daughter of Mrs. Ex-County-Clerk Boody--would
remind her husband that he was only a Pepperall, after all, while her
son was at least half Boody. Whereupon her husband would remind her of
certain things about the Boodys. And so it would go. But that was other
mornings. This was this morning.

Among all the homes that the sun looked upon--or would have looked upon
if it could have looked upon anything and if it hadn't been raining and
the Pepperall roof had not been impervious to light, though not to
moisture--among them all, surely the Pepperall reveille would have been
the least attractive. Homer never got his picture of rosy-fingered
Aurora smilingly leaping out of the couch of night from any such home as
the Pepperalls' in Carthage.

Serina was as unlike Aurora as possible. Aurora is usually poised on
tiptoe, with her well-manicured nails gracefully extended, and nothing
much about her except a chariot and more or less chiffon, according to
whether the picture is for families or bachelors.

Serina was entirely surrounded by flannelette, of simple and pitilessly
chaste design--a hole at the top for her head to go through and a larger
one at the other extreme for her feet to stick out at. But it was so
long that you couldn't have seen her feet if you had been there. And
Papa Pepperall, who was there, was no longer interested in those once
exciting ankles. They had been more interesting when there had been less
of them. But we'd better talk about the sleeves.

The sleeves were so long that they kept falling into the water where
Serina was making a hasty toilet at the little marble-topped altar to
cleanliness which the Pepperalls called the "worsh-stand"--that is, the
"hand-wash-basin," as Mrs. Hippisley called it after she came back from
her never-to-be-forgotten trip to England.

But then Serina's sleeves had always been falling into the suds, and
ever since she could remember she had rolled the