This was one of the little touches of perfect taste and adaptation which could sometimes make Leslie Goldthwaite almost beautiful, and was there ever a girl of fifteen who would not like to be beautiful if she could?  This wish, and the thought and effort it would induce, were likely to be her great temptation.  Passably pretty girls, who may, with care, make themselves often more than passable, have far the hardest of it with their consciences about these things; and Leslie had a conscience, and was reflective for her age,—­and we have seen how questions had begun to trouble her.

A Sunday between a packing and a journey is a trying day always.  There are the trunks, and it is impossible not to think of the getting up and getting off to-morrow; and one hates so to take out fresh sleeves and collars and pocket-handkerchiefs, and to wear one’s nice white skirts.  It is a Sunday put off, too probably, with but odds and ends of thought as well as apparel.

Leslie went to church, of course,—­the Goldthwaites were always regular in this; and she wore her quiet straw bonnet.  Mrs. Goldthwaite had a feeling that hats were rather pert and coquettish for the sanctuary.  Nevertheless they met the Haddens in the porch, in the glory of their purple pheasant plumes, whereof the long tail-feathers made great circles in the air as the young heads turned this way and that, in the excitement of a few snatched words before they entered.

The organ was playing; and the low, deep, tremulous rumble that an organ gives sometimes, when it seems to creep under and vibrate all things with a strange, vital thrill, overswept their trivial chat and made Leslie almost shiver.  “Oh, I wish they wouldn’t do that,” she said, turning to go in.

“What?” said Jeannie Hadden, unaware.

“Touch the nerve.  The great nerve—­of creation.”

“What queer things Les’ Goldthwaite says sometimes,” whispered Elinor; and they passed the inner door.

The Goldthwaites sat two pews behind the Haddens.  Leslie could not help thinking how elegant Mrs. Linceford was, as she swept in, in her rich black silk, and real lace shawl, and delicate, costly bonnet; and the perfectly gloved hand that upheld a bit of extravagance in Valenciennes lace and cambric made devotion seem—­what?  The more graceful and touching in one who had all this world’s luxuries, or—­almost a mockery?

The pheasant-plumed hats went decorously down in prayer-time, but the tail-feathers ran up perker than ever, from the posture; Leslie saw this, because she had lifted her own head and unclosed her eyes in a self-indignant honesty, when she found on what her secret thoughts were running.  Were other people so much better than she?  And could they do both things?  How much was right in all this that was outwardly so beguiling, and where did the “serving Mammon” begin?

Was everything so much intenser and more absorbing with her than with the Haddens?  Why could she not take things as they came, as these girls did, or seemed to do?—­be glad of her pretty things, her pretty looks even, her coming pleasures, with no misgivings or self-searchings, and then turn round and say her prayers properly?