he Lord has
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'"

She was very pale when she came to us, but her eyes were bright and she
smiled as she put her arms around as many of us as she could reach.

"What a beautiful horse!" said Sally. "Look at that saddle and bridle!
The Pryor girl is here."

"Why should she come?" asked Shelley.

"To show her fine clothes and queen it over us!"

"Children, children!" said mother. "'Judge not!' This is a house of
worship. The Lord may be drawing her in His own way. It is for us to
help Him by being kind and making her welcome."

At the church door we parted and sat with our teachers, but for the
first time as I went down the aisle I was not thinking of my linen
dress, my patent leather slippers, and my pretty curls. It suddenly
seemed cheap to me to twist my hair when it was straight as a shingle,
and cut my head on tin. If the Lord had wanted me to have curls, my
hair would have been like Sally's. Seemed to me hers tried to see into
what big soft curls it could roll. May said ours was so straight it
bent back the other way. Anyway, I made up my mind to talk it over
with father and always wear braids after that, if I could get him to
coax mother to let me.

Our church was quite new and it was beautiful. All the casings were
oiled wood, and the walls had just a little yellow in the last skin
coating used to make them smooth, so they were a creamy colour, and the
blinds were yellow. The windows were wide open and the wind drifted
through, while the birds sang as much as they ever do in August, among
the trees and bushes of the cemetery. Every one had planted so many
flowers of all kinds on the graves you could scent sweet odours. Often
a big, black-striped, brown butterfly came sailing in through one of
the windows, followed the draft across the room, and out of another. I
was thinking something funny: it was about what the Princess had said
of other people, and whether hers were worse. I looked at my father
sitting in calm dignity in his Sunday suit and thought him quite as
fine and handsome as mother did. Every Sabbath he wore the same suit,
he sat in the same spot, he worshipped the Lord in his calm, earnest
way. The ministers changed, but father was as much a part of the
service as the Bible on the desk or the communion table. I wondered if
people said things about him, and if they did, what they were. I never
had heard. Twisting in my seat, one by on