ox steps softly in, rustling in the same black taffeta she
always wears, and the same black silk bonnet,--worn just fifty-two
days in a year, and carefully pinned and boxed away for all the other
three hundred and thirteen.

As fashions did not come to Walton oftener than once in ten years,
it followed that apparel among the young people wore very much the
expression of individual taste, while among the elders it was wont to
assume the cast now irreverently designated by "fossil remains." And,
really, it did not much matter. Whatever our country-grandmothers were
admired and esteemed for, be sure it was not dress.

As the clock pointed to half-past ten, the door opened quickly, and
Dorcas stood on the threshold, like a summer breeze that has stopped
one moment its fluttering, and hovers fresh, sweet, and sunny in
the morning air. The breath of her presence, if indeed it were not
association, roused old Colonel Fox from his sleep. He glanced at her,
took the ready arm of his wife, looked again at the clock, and passed
out over the flat door-stone with his cocked hat and cane, as became
an invalid soldier and a gentleman. Behind them, hymn-book in hand
and with downcast eyes, walked Dorcas. Not a word passed between the
parents and their only daughter. On Sunday, people were not to think
their own thoughts. And familiarity between parents and children,
never allowed even on week-days, would have been unpardonable
unfitness on the Sabbath.

They reached the church-door just as the minister, with his white wig
shedding powder on his venerable back, passed up the broad-aisle.
A perfectly decorous throng of the loiterers followed, and the
pews rapidly filled. The Colonel and his wife, being persons of
consequence, took their way with suitable dignity and deliberation. In
the three who turned, about half-way up the broad-aisle, into a square
pew, a physiognomist would have seen at one glance the characteristic
features of each mind. In the Colonel, choleric, fresh, and
warm-hearted, a good lover, and not very good hater. In his wife, "a
chronicler of small-beer," with a perfectly negative expression. One
might guess she did no harm, and fear she did no good,--that she saved
the hire of an upper servant,--that she was an inveterate sewer and
cleaner, and would leave the world in time with an epitaph.

On the third figure and face the physiognomist might dwell
longer,--but that rather because youth, hope, and inexperience ha