This morning, knowing that if I went down into the town I would arrive spattered with mud up to my ears and so bedraggled that the pew-opener might conceivably refuse me admission on the ground that I would spoil her pews, I set out for the nearest village across the hills, hoping that a country congregation would be more used to mud. I found the church shut, and nobody with the least desire to have it opened. The rain beat dismally down on my umbrella as I stood before the blank locked door. A neglected fence divided the graves from the parson's front yard, protecting them, I suppose, as much as in it lay, from the depredations of wandering cows. On the other side of it was the parson's manure heap, on which stood wet fowls mournfully investigating its contents. His windows, shut and impenetrable, looked out on to the manure heap, the fowls, the churchyard, and myself. It is a very ancient church, picturesque, and with beautiful lancet windows with delicate traceries carefully bricked up. Not choosing to have walked five miles for nothing, and not wishing to break a habit ten years old of praying in a church for my darling mother's soul on this day of souls and darling saints, I gathered up my skirts and splashed across the parson's pools and knocked modestly at his door for the key. The instant I did it two dogs from nowhere, two infamous little dogs of that unpleasant breed from which I suppose Pomerania takes its name, rushed at me furiously barking. The noise was enough to wake the dead; and since nobody stirred in the house or showed other signs of being wakened it became plain to my deductive intelligence that its inmates couldn't be dead. So I knocked again. The dogs yelled again. I stood looking at them in deep disgust, quite ashamed of the way in which the dripping stillness was being rent because of me. A soothing umbrella shaken at them only increased their fury. They seemed, like myself, to grow more and more indignant the longer the door was kept shut. At last a servant opened it a few inches, eyed me with astonishment, and when she heard my innocent request eyed me with suspicion. She hesitated, half shut the door, hesitated again, and then saying she would go and see what the Herr Pastor had to say, shut the door quite. I do not remember ever having felt less respectable. The girl clearly thought I was not; the dogs clearly were sure I was not. Properly incensed by the shutting of the door and the expression on the girl's face I decided that the only dignified course was to go away; but I couldn't because of the dogs.