It was a Sunday afternoon, towards the end of the summer term, and the boys were sauntering about in the green playground, or lying on the banks reading and chatting.  Eric was with a little knot of his chief friends, enjoying the sea breeze as they sat on the grass.  At last the bell of the school chapel began to ring, and they went in to the afternoon service.  Eric usually sat with Duncan and Llewellyn, immediately behind the benches allotted to chance visitors.  The bench in front of them happened on this afternoon to be occupied by some rather odd people, viz., an old man with long white hair, and two ladies remarkably stout, who were dressed with much juvenility, although past middle age.  Their appearance immediately attracted notice, and no sooner had they taken their seats than Duncan and Llewellyn began to titter.  The ladies’ bonnets, which were of white, trimmed with long green leaves and flowers, just peered over the top of the boys’ pew, and excited much amusement.  But Eric had not yet learnt to disregard the solemnity of the place, and the sacred act in which they were engaged.  He tried to look away, and attend to the service, and for a time he partially succeeded, although, seated as he was between the two triflers, who were perpetually telegraphing to each other their jokes, he found it a difficult task, and secretly he began to be much tickled.

At last the sermon commenced, and Llewellyn, who had imprisoned a grasshopper in a paper cage, suddenly let it hop out.  The first hop took it to the top of the pew; the second perched it on the shoulder of the stoutest lady.  Duncan and Llewellyn tittered louder, and even Eric could not resist a smile.  But when the lady, feeling some irritation on her shoulder, raised her hand, and the grasshopper took a frightened leap into the centre of the green foliage which enwreathed her bonnet, none of the three could stand it, and they burst into fits of laughter, which they tried in vain to conceal by bending down their heads and cramming their handkerchiefs into their mouths.  Eric, having once given way, enjoyed the joke uncontrollably, and the lady made matters worse by her uneasy attempts to dislodge the unknown intruder, and discover the cause of the tittering, which she could not help hearing.  At last all three began to laugh so violently that several heads were turned in their direction, and Dr. Rowlands’ stern eye caught sight of their levity.  He stopped short in his sermon, and for one instant transfixed them with his indignant glance.  Quiet was instantly restored, and alarm reduced them to the most perfect order, although the grasshopper still sat imperturbable among the artificial flowers.  Meanwhile the stout lady had discovered that for some unknown reason she had been causing considerable amusement, and, attributing it to intentional ridicule, looked round, justly hurt.  Eric, with real shame, observed the deep vexation of her manner, and bitterly repented his share in the transaction.