Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/191

Rh skirts stood out almost straight around her and her yellow braids were brushed until they  shone. He observed that she had grown a little taller since last year, but that her pink cheeks were as round as ever and her face as  earnest. Her father and mother were with her, and young Jacky, very restless and making  continual trouble.

The service began with a prayer that Billy sometimes, during idle moments in a long sermon, had examined curiously in the prayer  book and wondered if it were ever used. “In Time of War and Tumults,” it was headed,  and reminded him of what for a little time he  had forgotten, that there was a war. He looked out of the window and tried to think of  it as true, but failed. No, there certainly could not be a war, not on such a day as this. Then he saw that one of the fishermen’s wives was crying quietly behind her pew, yes, and  there was another over in the corner doing the  same thing. They had boys who were blue-jackets in the Navy, he supposed, and were foolish enough to think that something might  happen to them. On the way up the hill, Aunt Mattie had been giving him a little talk  on history and had pointed out that nearly all