up to the steps with a consciousness of being conspicuous and enviable.
They had a bashful look when they came in, and for a few minutes after
they took their seats they evidently felt that all eyes were fixed upon
them; but after a little while they were quite at their ease, and looked
critically at the new arrivals.

The old folks interested us most. "Do you notice how many more old women
there are than old men?" whispered Kate to me. And we wondered if the
husbands and brothers had been drowned, and if it must not be sad to
look at the blue, sunshiny sea beyond the marshes, if the far-away white
sails reminded them of some ships that had never sailed home into
Deephaven harbor, or of fishing-boats that had never come back to land.

The girls and young men adorned themselves in what they believed to be
the latest fashion, but the elderly women were usually relics of old
times in manner and dress. They wore to church thin, soft silk gowns
that must have been brought from over the seas years upon years before,
and wide collars fastened with mourning-pins holding a lock of hair.
They had big black bonnets, some of them with stiff capes, such as Kate
and I had not seen before since our childhood. They treasured large
rusty lace veils of scraggly pattern, and wore sometimes, on pleasant
Sundays, white China-crape shawls with attenuated fringes; and there
were two or three of these shawls in the congregation which had been
dyed black, and gave an aspect of meekness and general unworthiness to
the aged wearer, they clung and drooped about the figure in such a
hopeless way. We used to notice often the most interesting scarfs,
without which no Deephaven woman considered herself in full dress.
Sometimes there were red India scarfs in spite of its being hot weather;
but our favorite ones were long strips of silk, embroidered along the
edges and at the ends with dismal-colored floss in odd patterns. I think