could remember had she stayed away from church--except when she had had
the measles and the mumps!

"I told grandfather last night that we should be too tired," explained
Judy, "and he won't expect us to go."

"Oh," said Anne, and picked up her book, luxuriating in the prospect of
a whole morning in which to read.

She wasn't quite comfortable, however. She was not a bit tired, and
she had never felt better in her life--and yet she was staying away
from church.

But the book she had opened was a volume of Dickens' Christmas stories,
and in three minutes she was carried away from the little town of
Fairfax to the heart of old London, and from the warmth of spring to
the bitterness of winter, as she listened with Toby Veck to the music
of the chimes that rang from the belfry tower.

It seemed only a part of the tale, therefore, when the bell of Fairfax
church pealed out the first warning of the Sunday service to all the
countryside.

"Ding dong, din, all come in, all come in," the bell had said to Anne
since childhood, and now it called her, until it silenced the crashing
voices of the bells of old London, and she had to listen.

She laid down her book. "The church bell is ringing," she said to Judy.

"I hear it," said Judy, indifferently.