It was on Sunday mornings that she felt most keenly the lapse of the neighborhood from former glories to a condition of sordid griminess. It was on these mornings that she fared forth to the old church, only three blocks away, in which the best people in town had formerly worshipped, but which had been deserted by nearly all the old parishioners. It was Mrs. Baron’s contention that it was indelicate, to say the least, for people to desert a church. There were things in the church life, she maintained, which could not be transplanted, and which constituted the very warp and woof of the domestic as well as the social foundations. She had come to regard herself as a kind of standard-bearer in this relationship, and she attended services somewhat ostentatiously, with the belief that she was not only lending her influence, but administering a rebuke as well. Ignoring the protests of her family, she had even consented to play the organ for the Sunday-school services. As a young lady she had learned to read music, as a matter of course, and though she possessed no musical intelligence, and had found it impossible to regain the old manual skill she had once possessed, she played the simple hymns with a kind of proud rigor, because she believed her participation in the services in this direction must impart an authority to the proceedings which the abler playing of some obscure individual could not have imparted. Indeed, Mrs. Baron was a personage on Sunday mornings; a gallant general leading a forlorn hope proudly and firmly. When Flora confessed to her that the dress had been rejected, she was too greatly amazed to say a great deal. She had also entered upon her stoic mood--her Sunday-morning mood. “You see, she is simply determined not to get along,” she declared with finality. She took the dress into her own hands and regarded it critically. “Do you see how carefully the feather-stitching is done?” she demanded. “Yes,” agreed Flora, “the--the feather-stitching _is_ beautiful. But really, I don’t believe she is simply perverse. If you could have seen the dismay in her eyes--” Flora smiled at the recollection. “I’ve seen women like that,” Mrs. Baron continued, “women who like to make difficulties; who go into hysterics over little things. It’s always just a lack of sense--that’s all it is.” “Yes--or temperament. I expect there’s a good deal in what people call temperament. I didn’t know children had it so much, but Bonnie May isn’t like other children. Maybe she has a good deal of temperament.” They examined the dress together without any very definite purpose. “She ought to know she can’t go on wearing that silly thing she came here in,” was Mrs. Baron’s next comment. “She must realize that,” agreed Flora. She added casually: “I think something soft, with a little color in it, might please her. You might let me try next time.” This was the wrong note again. “As if I weren’t capable of making a child’s dress!” protested Mrs. Baron.