"I vote 'Yes,' too; so the ayes have it," said Mrs. Purely gaily, leading them through a neat hall into a neat kitchen, where they solemnly took their seats.
"My visitors always help me with the lemonade," said the purring little lady, giving Nance the lemons to roll, and Dan the ice to crack. Then as she fluttered about, she began to ask them vague and seemingly futile questions about home and school and play. Gradually their answers grew from monosyllables into sentences, until, by the time the lemonade was ready to serve, Nance was completely thawed out and Dan was getting soft around the edges. Things were on the way to positive conviviality when Mrs. Purdy suddenly turned to Nance and asked her where she went to Sunday school.
Now Sunday school had no charms for Nance. On the one occasion when curiosity had induced her to follow the stream of well-dressed children into the side door of the cathedral, she had met with disillusion. It was a place where little girls lifted white petticoats when they sat down and straightened pink sashes when they got up, and put nickels in a basket. Nance had had no lace petticoat or pink sash or nickel. She showed her discomfort by misbehaving.
"Didn't you ever go back?" asked Mrs. Purdy.
"Nome. They didn't want me. I was bad, an' the teacher said Sunday school was a place for good little girls."
"My! my!" said Mrs. Purdy, "this will never do. And how about you, Dan?
Do you go?"
"Sometimes I've went," said Dan. "I like it."
While this conversation was going on Nance could not keep her eyes from the open door. There was more sky and grass out there than she had ever seen at one time before. The one green spot with which she was familiar was the neat plot of lawn on each side of the concrete walk leading into the cathedral, and that had to be viewed through a chink in the fence and was associated with the words, "Keep Out."
When all the lemonade was gone, and only one cookie left for politeness, Mrs. Purdy took them into the sitting-room where a delicate-looking man sat in a wheel-chair, carving something from a piece of wood. Nance's quick eyes took in every detail of the bright, commonplace room; its gay, flowered carpet and chintz curtains, its "fruit pieces" in wide, gold frames, and its crocheted tidies presented a new ideal of elegance.
There was a music-box on the wall in which small figures moved about to a tinkling melody; there were charm strings of bright colored buttons, and a spinning-wheel, and a pair of bellows, all of which Mrs. Purdy explained at length.