[Illustration: "'BETTY! _BET-TY!_' CALLED NANNIE."]
"Are you two coming, or are you not?" cried Phil from the hall below. "The procession is ready to start, and woe to stragglers! If service began at twelve instead of eleven o'clock, Jack, you'd still be late. Come on, Betty."
"I declare, if you aren't all the greatest pack of naggers!" exclaimed Jack, impatiently, throwing down the blacking brushes and snatching up his hat; then he raced after us down the stairs and brought up the rear as we filed out of the front door.
There are always so many of us to go to church--all of us children (except Alan, who goes to the children's service in the afternoon), and Miss Marston and papa--that we do make, as Phil says, a regular procession as we walk down the avenue and across the park to the old brown church every Sunday. I don't mind going in the procession, nor does Jack,--unless he's _very_ late; but Nora thinks it's horrid, and Phil and Felix always hang back for the very last, and try to look as if they didn't belong to us at all. Nannie and Mädel go with papa, Kathie and Paul with Miss Marston, and the rest of us straggle along as we like until we get to the church. It's brown and very large, and has a good deal of ivy growing all over it. It's the church where Murray Unsworth and Helen Vassah stood sponsors for their little cousin Paul; they go there and their grandfather and grandmother.
Papa likes to sit away up front; so up the middle aisle we go,--oh, how the boys and Nora hate this part!--and file into the first two pews. We are always early, and sometimes it does seem so long before service begins. Jack and I sit at the upper end of the first pew, and I couldn't tell you how many times we have read the Creed and Commandments that are printed back of the chancel, and the memorials on each side. Then we look out the hymns for the day, and read them all through. Jack likes to do this; he has all sorts of odd ideas about them; for instance, he says that when he sings,
"Christian! dost thou see them On the holy ground, How the powers of darkness Rage thy steps around? Christian! up and smite them, Counting gain but loss; In the strength that cometh By the holy cross,"