The interior of Trinity Church was so magnificent, the Christmas decorations so fresh and beautiful, and the service so imposing, that no one thought of such a thing as smiling.
"How could I have been so impatient, yesterday?" thought Prudy, as she listened to the plaintive chant, "He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief."
"Why, if you only think of that, how our Saviour had trouble every minute, it doesn't seem as if it makes so much difference whether we people and children have a good time or not."
Here, as they were about to seat themselves at the close of the chant, Fly, who, in spite of her brother's warnings, had been tilting back and forth on a stool, suddenly tipped forward, and hit her nose furiously. Blood flowed from the wound; and the sight of it, together with the pain, made the child frantic. She forgot where she was and screamed. Poor Mrs. Pragoffyetski! Though a good woman in the main, she was rather proud of appearances, and had just been thinking the four children did her credit. But now! The shrill cry of distress called everybody's attention to her pew. The whole audience were looking up from their prayer-books in astonishment.
"Tut, tut! My dear! My love! Hush, my babe, lie still,—O, can't you stop crying?"
Horace, too, was trying to quiet the child; but Fly sincerely believed she was bleeding to death; so what did she care for proprieties?
"O, my shole!" piped she aloud, plunging both hands into the stream of blood, and afterwards into her hair.
Thus, by the time Mrs. Pragoff and Horace got her into the aisle, she looked as if she had been murdered.
"I wish I was twenty-one," thought Horace, bitterly. "Mrs. Fixfax had no business steaming this child. I believe it has gone to her brain."
The party of five marched out of church, for Mrs. Pragoff did not wish to make a second sensation by coming back after Prudy and Dotty.