ought to come and hear it, Miss Lloyd."

The pedlar said this out of bravado, merely to show he wasn't
scared of the Old Lady, for all her grand airs. The Old Lady
made no answer, and he thought he had offended her. He went
away, wishing he hadn't said it. Had he but known it, the Old
Lady had forgotten the existence of all and any egg pedlars.
He had blotted himself and his insignificance out of her
consciousness by his last sentence. All her thoughts,
feelings, and wishes were submerged in a very whirlpool of
desire to hear Sylvia sing that solo. She went into the house
in a tumult and tried to conquer that desire. She could not do
it, even thought she summoned all her pride to her aid. Pride
said:

"You will have to go to church to hear her. You haven't fit
clothes to go to church in. Think what a figure you will make
before them all."

But, for the first time, a more insistent voice than pride
spoke to her soul--and, for the first time, the Old Lady
listened to it. It was too true that she had never gone to
church since the day on which she had to begin wearing her
mother's silk dresses. The Old Lady herself thought that this
was very wicked; and she tried to atone by keeping Sunday very
strictly, and always having a little service of her own,
morning and evening. She sang three hymns in her cracked
voice, prayed aloud, and read a sermon. But she could not
bring herself to go to church in her out-of-date clothes--she,
who had once set the fashions in Spencervale, and the longer