On Sunday mornings, during the service, Elizabeth earnestly tried to banish all worldly thoughts.  In spite of this resolve, however, she was always conscious of a certain regret that the choir seats necessitated turning her profile to the congregation.  At the age of twelve she had decided that her nose was too short, and nothing had happened since to change her conviction.  She seldom so much as glanced at the congregation.  During her slow progress up and down the main aisle behind the Courtney boy, who was still a soprano and who carried the great gold cross, she always looked straight ahead.  Or rather, although she was unconscious of this, slightly up.  She always looked up when she sang, for she had commenced to take singing lessons when the piano music rack was high above her head.

So she still lifted her eyes as she went up the aisle, and was extremely serious over the whole thing.  Because it is a solemn matter to take a number of people who have been up to that moment engrossed in thoughts of food or golf or servants or business, and in the twinkling of an eye, as the prayer book said about death, turn their minds to worship.

Nevertheless, although she never looked at the pews, she was always conscious of two of them.  The one near the pulpit was the Sayres’ and it was the social calendar of the town.  When Mrs. Sayre was in it, it was the social season.  One never knew when Mrs. Sayre’s butler would call up and say: 

“I am speaking for Mrs. Sayre.  Mrs. Sayre would like to have the pleasure of Miss Wheeler’s company on Thursday to luncheon, at one-thirty.”

When the Sayre pew was empty, the town knew, if it happened to be winter, that the Florida or Santa Barbara season was on; or in summer the Maine coast.

The other pew was at the back of the church.  Always it had one occupant; sometimes it had three.  But the behavior of this pew was very erratic.  Sometimes an elderly and portly gentleman with white hair and fierce eyebrows would come in when the sermon was almost over.  Again, a hand would reach through the grill behind it, and a tall young man who had had his eyes fixed in the proper direction, but not always on the rector, would reach for his hat, get up and slip out.  On these occasions, however, he would first identify the owner of the hand and then bend over the one permanent occupant of the pew, a little old lady.  His speech was as Yea, yea, or Nay, nay, for he either said, “I’ll be back for dinner,” or “Don’t look for me until you see me.”

And Mrs. Crosby, without taking her eyes from the sermon, would nod.

Of late years, Doctor David Livingstone had been taking less and less of the “Don’t-look-for-me-until-you-see-me” cases, and Doctor Dick had acquired a car, which would not freeze when left outside all night like a forgotten dog, and a sense of philosophy about sleep.  That is, that eleven o’clock P.M. was bed-time to some people, but was just eleven o’clock for him.