Here, at last, was her chance. "But it really doesn't matter a bit. I can
go to another church quite well. I even think I'd rather. For a change.
And the service isn't so long, at least so I've heard--except the
sermon," she added truthfully.

Had she denied religion altogether, the look Mrs. Gurley bent on her
could not have been more annihilating.

"There is--unfortunately!--no occasion, for you to do anything of the
kind," she retorted. "I myself, am an Episcopalian, and I expect those
gels, who belong to the Church of England, to attend it, with me."

The unpacking at an end, Mrs. Gurley rose, smoothed down her
apron, and was just on the point of turning away, when on the bed
opposite Laura's she espied an under-garment, lying wantonly across the
counterpane. At this blot on the orderliness of the room she seemed to
swell like a turkey-cock, seemed literally to grow before Laura's eyes
as, striding to the door, she commanded an invisible some one to send
Lilith Gordon to her "DI-rectly!"!

There was an awful pause; Laura did not dare to raise her head; she even
said a little prayer. Mrs. Gurley stood working at her chain, and
tapping her foot--like a beast waiting for its prey, thought the child.
And at last a hurried step was heard in the corridor, the door opened
and a girl came in, high-coloured and scant of breath. Laura darted one
glance at Mrs. Gurley's face, then looked away and studied the pattern
of a quilt, trying not to hear what was said. Her throat swelled, grew
hard and dry with pity for the culprit. But Lilith Gordon--a girl with
sandy eyebrows, a turned-up nose, a thick plait of red-gold hair, and a
figure so fully developed that Laura mentally dubbed it a "lady's