"I don't want to play Sunday school any more, Zaidee," said Kenneth, getting up. "I'd ravver play turch. I'm ze talking man, wiv white skirts on," he added, standing on a stone, and waving his short arms about, for the young man had made his first appearance at church the Sunday before, and had wanted to play "turch" ever since.
"You were a naughty boy," said Zaidee, reproachfully, "you talked out loud right in meetin'-church, and I was so 'shamed."
"And you falled off the stool when all the people were kneeling down and saying, 'The seats they do hear us, O Lord;' and you made a great big noise," added Helen, severely, for her.
"'The seats they do hear us,'" repeated Cricket. "What does she mean, Eunice, do you suppose?"
"Why, don't you know, Cricket," explained Helen, for herself. "When all the people are kneeling down, and the minister keeps saying things, and the people keep saying, 'The seats they do hear us,' 'course they hear them, 'cause they say it right at the back of the seats."
Eunice and Cricket shouted with laughter.
"She means, 'We beseech Thee to hear us,'" cried Cricket, choking, quite as if she never made any mistakes on her own account. But other people's mistakes are so different from our own. Helen, her sensitive feelings dreadfully hurt, instantly retired under her apron, and refused to be comforted. They always had to be careful about laughing at Helen, whereas Zaidee never seemed to mind.
"Never mind, pet," said Eunice, kissing and petting her. "It wasn't a very bad mistake."
"What's this?" said Cricket, to change the subject She had been plunging her arm down deep in the sand, and had struck something big and bony. She cleared away the loose sand.
"That's our cemi-terror," explained Zaidee; "we'd been having a frinyal before we had Sunday school, and we buried that thing. We finded it in the field the other day. Let's pull it up now, Helen. We've had lots of frinyals, Cricket, and we've buried ever so many things in our cemi-terror. Turkles and things like that, you know."