“I think,” said Henrietta, demurely, “we ought to come back to this church once in a while just to keep those poor Theologs perspiring. Miss Woodruff says perspiring is necessary to good health.”
The Sunday dinners were apt to be rather good; there was usually chicken.
“But,” complained Mabel, after one of these chicken dinners, “I don’t see why I have to get all the lizzers and gizzers.”
“What!” gasped Maude.
“Givers and lizzers; no, gizzers and lizards,” sputtered Mabel. “I always get them.”
“She means livers and gizzards,” explained Jean.
Sunday afternoons dragged. The girls could walk within bounds but that was not particularly exciting. On week days they usually gathered nuts in the grove—if one threw enough sticks it was possible to knock down a hickory nut or two most any day; or explored an ancient garden in which there were old apple trees. But in Sunday frocks and Sunday shoes it was wiser to stick to the sidewalks, so the girls strolled about and gossiped. It was truly surprising how much they found to talk about.
Sometimes on rainy Sunday afternoons, Henrietta gathered a flock of the younger girls about her on the wide front staircase, a dim, spooky, black walnutty place with a vast dark space overhead, and told thrilling tales. That was one thing that Henrietta could do to perfection.
But Sunday evenings at Highland Hall were almost invariably harrowing. The girls gathered about the piano in the big, chilly drawing room and sang familiar hymns and wept.
Sallie Dickinson wept because she hadn’t any home. The rest of them wept because they had. Still, Sunday after Sunday evening they sang the same sorrowful hymns because it seemed the proper thing to do, and then retired sniffling and snuffling to their narrow, single beds.