discreet,
singing with all her soul and marking time with her hands, so accustomed
to the upward and downward movement of the daily service. The straight,
plain dresses were as fresh and smooth as perfect washing could make
them, and the round childlike faces looked quaint and sweet with the
cropped hair tucked under the stiff little caps. Sue was seated with
Mary and Jane on the steps, and Susanna saw with astonishment that her
needles were moving to and fro and she was knitting as serenely and
correctly as a mother in Israel; singing, too, in a delicate little
treble that was like a skylark's morning note. Susanna could hear her
distinctly as she delightedly flung out the long words so dear to her
soul and so difficult to dull little Jane and Mary:--

"Res-ur-rect-ing, Soul-In-spir-ing,
Re-gen-er-a-ting Gospel Life,
It lead-eth a-way from all sin and strife."

Jane's cap was slightly unsettled, causing its wearer to stop knitting
now and then and pull it forward or push it back; and in one of these
little feminine difficulties Susanna saw Sue reach forward and deftly
transfer the cap to her own head. Jane was horrified, but rather slow to
wrath and equally slow in ingenuity. Sue looked a delicious Shaker with
her delicate face, her lovely eyes, and her yellow hair grown into soft
rings; and quite intoxicated with her cap, her knitting, and the general
air of holiness so unexpectedly emanating from her, she moved her little
hands up and down, as the tune rose and fell, in a way that would have
filled Eldress Abby with joy. Susanna's heart beat fast, and she
wondered for a moment, as she went back to her room, whether she could
ever give Sue a worldly childhood more free from danger than the life
she was now living. She found letters from Aunt Louisa and Jack on
reaching her room, and they lay in her lap under a pile of towels, to be
read and reread while her busy needle flew over the coarse crash. Sue
stole in quietly, kissed her mother's cheek, and sat down on her stool
by the window, marveling, with every "under" of the needle and "over" of
the yarn, that it was she, Sue Hathaway, who was making a real stocking.

Jack's pen was not that of an especially ready writer, but he had a
practical way of conveying considerable news. His present contributions,
when freed from their phonetic errors and spelled in Christian fashion,
read somewhat as follows:--

Father says I must write to you every wee