the comfort and support of the Lord in this affliction for all the
second and third cousins upon his list, who bowed their heads with a
sort of mournful importance as they listened.

Solomon Wells was an elderly man, tall, and bending limberly under
his age like an old willow, his spare long body in nicely kept
broadcloth sitting and rising with wide flaps of black coat-tails,
his eyes peering forth mildly through spectacles. He was a widower of
long standing. His daughter Eliza, who kept his house, sat beside
him. She resembled her father closely, and herself looked like an old
person anywhere but beside him. There the juvenility of comparison
was hers.

Solomon Wells, during the singing, before he offered prayer, had cast
sundry perplexed glances at a group of strangers on his right, and
then at his list. He was quite sure that they were not mentioned
thereon. Once he looked perplexedly at Paulina Maria, but she was
singing hard, in a true strong voice, and did not heed him. The
strangers sat behind her. There was a large man, lumbering and
uncomfortable in his best clothes, a small woman, and three little
girls, all dressed in blue delaine gowns and black silk mantillas and
blue bonnets.

The minister had a strong conviction that these people should be
mentioned in his prayer. He gave his daughter Eliza a little nudge,
and looked inquiringly at them and at her, but she shook her head
slightly--she did not know who they were. Her father had to content
himself with vaguely alluding in his petition to all other relatives
of this afflicted family.