Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/43

 came in were familiar, and I welcomed them each year.

"Some new-rich person probably," Nancy decided. "Ducky, I have a feeling that the owner of The Viking bought it from the proceeds of pills or headache powders."

"Or pork."

I am not sure that Nancy and I were justified in our disdain—whale-oil has perhaps no greater claim to social distinction than bacon and ham or—pills.

The church bells were ringing, and I had to go down. Nancy stayed on the roof.

"Send Anthony up if he's there," she said; "we will sit here aloft like two cherubs and look down on you, and you will wish that you were with us."

But I knew that I should not wish it; that I should be glad to walk along the shaded streets with my friends and neighbors, to pass the gardens that were yellow with sunlight, and gay with larkspur and foxglove and hollyhocks, and to sit in the pew which was mine by inheritance.

Anthony was down-stairs. He was a tall, perfectly turned out youth, and he greeted me in his perfect manner.

"Nancy is on the roof," I told him, "and she wants you to come up."

"So you are going to church? Pray for me, Elizabeth." 37