"
Chapter XVIII
Church
"HETTY, Hetty, don't you know church begins at two, and it's gone half
after one a'ready? Have you got nothing better to think on this good
Sunday as poor old Thias Bede's to be put into the ground, and him
drownded i' th' dead o' the night, as it's enough to make one's back
run cold, but you must be 'dizening yourself as if there was a wedding
i'stid of a funeral?"
"Well, Aunt," said Hetty, "I can't be ready so soon as everybody else,
when I've got Totty's things to put on. And I'd ever such work to make
her stand still."
Hetty was coming downstairs, and Mrs. Poyser, in her plain bonnet and
shawl, was standing below. If ever a girl looked as if she had been made
of roses, that girl was Hetty in her Sunday hat and frock. For her hat
was trimmed with pink, and her frock had pink spots, sprinkled on a
white ground. There was nothing but pink and white about her, except
in her dark hair and eyes and her little buckled shoes. Mrs. Poyser
was provoked at herself, for she could hardly keep from smiling, as any
mortal is inclined to do at the sight of pretty round things. So she
turned without speaking, and joined the group outside the house door,
followed by Hetty, whose heart was fluttering so at the thought of some
one she expected to see at church that she hardly felt the ground she
trod on.
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