"I shall take them with me to prayer meeting in the evening," said Siller.
"Very well," replied Mrs. Lyman.
The little girls had never visited at Dr. Hilton's before, and were glad to go, but Patty did not know how much it would cost her. The house was very nice, and the white sand on the parlor floor was traced in patterns of roses and buds as fine as a velvet carpet. On the door-stone, at the east side of the house, stood an iron kettle, with flaming red flowers growing in it, as bright as those on Mary's sampler. Mary said it seemed as if the kettle had been taken off the stove and set out there to cool.
After a nice supper of hot biscuits, honey, cheese, and spice-cake, they all started for prayer meeting, locking the house behind them; for Dr. Hilton had business in the next town, and was to be gone all night.
Patty was not in the habit of sitting remarkably still, even at church on the Sabbath; and as for a prayer meeting in a school-house, she had never attended one before, and the very idea of it amused her to begin with. It was so funny to see grown people in those seats where the children sat in the daytime! Patty almost wondered if the minister would not call them out in the floor to recite. The services were long, and grew very dull. To pass away the time, she kept sliding off the back seat, which was much too high for her, and bouncing back again, twisting her head around to see who was there, or peeping through her fingers at a little boy, who peeped back again.
Mary whispered to her to sit still, and Siller Noonin shook her head; but Patty did not consider Mary worth minding, and had no particular respect for Siller. Finally, just at the close of a long prayer, she happened to spy Daddy Wiggins, who was sleeping with his mouth open, and the sight was too much for Patty: she giggled out-right. It was a very faint laugh, hardly louder than the chirp of a cricket; but it reached the sharp ears of Deacon Turner, the tithing-man,—the same one who sat in church watching to see if the children behaved well, and he called right out in meeting, in a dreadful voice,—
"Patience Lyman!"
If he had fired a gun at her head it would not have startled her more. It was the first time she had ever been spoken to in public, and she sank back in Mary's arms, feeling that all was over with her. Other little girls had had their names called out, but they were generally those whose parents did not take proper care of them,—rude children, and not the sort with whom Patty associated.
O, what would her mother say? Was there any place where she could go and hide? Sally Potter would never speak to her again, and Linda Chase would think she was a heathen child.
She didn't care whether she ever had any new clothes to wear or not; what difference would it make to anybody that lived out in the barn? And that was where she meant to live all the rest of her days,—in one of the haymows.