intervals along their tops there are elaborate wrought-iron urns, each
filled with a huge dusty century plant. And in the side wall toward
the rectory yard of the church you can see an unused iron gate, its
rusty lock and hinges matted through and through with ancient ivy.
Pretend that it's moon-light and it's spring and that it's early
evening in the year of our Lord 1897 and that over there by the gate
is Felicia Day, about seven years old, peering through the gate into
the rectory yard, laughing softly as she always laughs on choir
practise nights. There was a certain bald dyspeptic choirmaster who
was most irritable as he drilled his unruly boy choir and on warm
evenings, when the oaken door under the heavy Gothic arches of the
church was ajar, she could watch their garbed figures and wide opened
mouths as they giggled over Gregorian chants under the swaying altar
lights.

Once the tallest, naughtiest boy of all, the one with the cherubic
"soprano" voice that was just threatening to break into piping
uselessness, had climbed to the top of the wall and dropped his little
black velvet cap at her feet.

"Get down from that wall!" the choirmaster had shouted.

Though the boy had ducked from view as suddenly as he had appeared he
had managed to demand of the small person under the wall,

"Who are you, girl?"

She was holding the cap tightly while she answered,

"I don't know, 'zactly who I are--" when she heard the choirmaster