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