He wore a new white sailor suit with pockets, and in one pocket was a penny to "pirle" in the plate: in the other a wee packet of Wotherspoon’s peppermints for refreshment during the sermon. His curly hair was brushed till it shone like the brass knocker on the front door when Elsa had newly cleaned it, and his round, rosy face was framed by a large new sailor hat that looked like a substantial sort of halo. White socks and neat black shoes with straps completed Edmund’s toilet, and his aunt thought that never yet had the Bethune family possessed a worthier scion. Mr. Wycherly assisted to direct Edmund’s fat, pink fingers into a tight, white cotton glove, and stood at the green gate watching the departure of Miss Esperance and her great-nephews, till the small black figure, with a little white sailor on either side, had vanished from his view. He marvelled greatly at the temerity of Miss Esperance in taking Edmund to church at this tender age, though it was not the age that mattered so much as Edmund. What Miss Esperance called the "Bethune temperament" was very marked in that sunny-haired small boy, and it was apt to manifest itself unexpectedly, wholly regardless of time or place. The house seemed queerly quiet and deserted as Mr. Wycherly returned to his room. Mause followed him and thrust a cold, wet nose into his hand, looking up at him from under her tangled hair with puzzled, pleading eyes. "Poor old lady," said Mr. Wycherly, "you are lonely, too, are you? We’ll go for a little walk when the bell stops." The church was a bare, white-washed, barn-like edifice, where none of the windows were ever opened, and the unchanged air was always redolent of hair-oil and strong peppermint. Edmund smiled and nodded at his friends as he pattered up the aisle to his aunt’s pew, and when Andrew Mowat, the precentor, looking unwontedly stern and unapproachable, took his seat under the pulpit, the little boy wondered what could have annoyed him that he looked so cross. On week-days Andrew, who kept the little grocer’s shop in the village, was the most sociable and friendly of creatures, and always bestowed "a twa-three acid-drops" on the little boys when they went with Robina to his shop. But to-day Andrew was far removed from worldly cares or enjoyments, and Edmund listened to him in awed astonishment as he wailed out the tune of the first psalm, "My heart not haughty is, O Lord," to be gradually taken up more or less tunefully by the whole congregation. For the first half-hour of service Edmund behaved beautifully. He held a large Bible open upside down, with white cotton fingers spread well out over the back. He hummed the tune diligently and not too loud during the first psalm, and stood quite moderately still during the first long prayers. It was not until the minister said: "Let us read in God’s word from the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Kings, beginning at the fifth verse," that the troubles of Miss Esperance really began.