"W'ich of his sisters—w'at? Wat you talkin' 'bout now?"
"Which is the good-looking one?"
"Oh, your Aunt Em'ly, o' course. Nobody ain't ever accused S'renie or Keren-Happuch o' bein' sinfully beautiful, fur's I know."
My Aunt Em'ly was invested for me with a new interest. Perhaps some day I might take after her and grow equally well-favoured. I did not remember having noticed that she was beautiful, and resolved to study her at the first opportunity.
CHAPTER II.
A SUNDAY-SCHOOL LESSON.
Going to church was a good old New England custom that in our family had borne transplanting to the West. Sunday was almost the pleasantest day in the week to me—not elbowing school-less Saturday from its throne; not of course even comparing with the bliss of Friday just after school, but easily surpassing the procession of four dull, dreaded, droning days the ogre Monday led.
The beauty and fragrance of the summer Sabbath began in the early morning, when I went out into the garden, before putting on my Sunday frock, and picked a quantity of the old-fashioned flowers that grew there. I arranged them in two flat bouquets, with tall gladiolus stalks behind and smaller growths ranging down in front so that they might see and be seen, peeping over each other's heads, when placed against the wall in church.
Then after the great toilet-making of the week we were off. The drive over the prairie in the democrat wagon behind our smartest pair of plough horses was a pleasure that never grew tame from repetition. Arriving at the church, I would give my bouquets to the old stoop-shouldered sexton and watch him anxiously as he ambled down the aisle with them. Perhaps my flowers—yes, the very flowers that I had dashed the dew from that morning—would be placed on the pulpit itself, not on the table below, nor yet about the gallery where sat the choir. Then indeed I felt honoured. But wherever they might be, I could watch them all through the services, perhaps catch their fragrance from some favouring breeze, and feel that they were own folks from home.