“When we had explained the matter to Charlie, he looked at us scornfully. ‘I never saw such sillies,’ he said. ‘If you girls pull out, though, it will make it that much easier for the rest of us. I’m for the Testament.’ Then he pretended he was reading from a book he held in his hand, ‘Presented to Charles Purviance by his pastor for excellence—.’ Betty started after him, and then Annie and I chased him, too, and we got to playing ‘tag’ and forgot all about Lissy and the Testament.
“Sunday was a beautiful day, bright and sunshiny. From miles around people came to attend the all-day service. There were many strangers. With the Orbisons came Mr. Orbison’s sister and her granddaughter, a little girl about my age named Mary Lou, who was visiting away from California. Mary Lou wore a silk dress and lace mitts and a hat with long velvet streamers and she carried a pink parasol.
Mary Lou wore a silk dress and lace mitts and carried a pink parasol
“Tables had been set up in the grove across from the church, and at noon, after the morning sermon, dinner was served. There was fried chicken and boiled ham and pickles and pie and cake and everything good you could think of, and the people had all they could eat.
“After dinner Mrs. Orbison brought Mary Lou over to where Annie and Betty and I were sitting and left her to get acquainted, so she said. But Mary Lou didn’t want to get acquainted with us. She just wanted to talk about herself. She told us that she had three silk dresses and eleven dolls and a string of red beads and a pony not much larger than a dog and ever so many other things.
“‘Don’t you have a silk dress for Sunday?’ she asked, looking at my blue sprigged lawn, which until then I had thought very nice.
“‘No,’ I replied. And I added crossly, ‘My mother says it’s not what you’ve got that counts but what you are,’ though I’m free to confess I didn’t get much consolation from this thought, then.
“Pretty soon we went into the church, and after a prayer and some songs the smaller children began to go up one by one to say their verses. Brother Bard kept count and as they finished each verse he would call out the number of it.
“After a while he came to Lissy Carson, and every one was surprised when she kept on until at last she had recited sixty-one verses, two more than anyone else had given so far.