Behind him sat the miller and Blossom Revercomb, who threw an occasional anxious glance at the empty seat beside Mrs.Gay and Kesiah; and behind them Judy Hatch raised her plain, enraptured face to the pulpit, where the rector had shaken out an immaculately ironed handkerchief and wiped his brow.
She knew who had ironed that handkerchief on Wednesday, which was Mrs.
Mullen's washing day, and her heart rejoiced as she remembered the care with which she had folded the creases.
It made no difference, said Mr.Mullen, replacing the handkerchief somewhere under his white surplice, whether a woman was ugly or beautiful, since they possessed Scriptural authority for the statement that beauty was vain, and no God-fearing man would rank loveliness of face or form above the capacity for self-sacrifice and the unfailing attendance upon the sick and the afflicted in any parish.

Beauty, indeed, was but too often a snare for the unwary--temptresses, he had been told, were usually beautiful persons.
Molly's lips trembled into a smile, and her eyes were wide and bright as she met those of the preacher.

For an instant he looked at her, gentle, admonishing, reproachful--then his gaze passed over Judy's seraphic features to the face of an old grey horse that stared wonderingly in through the south window.

Along the whitewashed plank fence of the church-yard, other horses were waiting patiently for the service to end, and from several side saddles, of an ancient pattern, hung flopping alpaca riding skirts, which the farmer's wives or daughters had worn over their best gowns to church.

A few locust trees shed their remaining small yellow leaves on the sunken graves, which were surrounded by crumbling wooden enclosures.