Miss Prudence pointed the shears rigidly. "Pindar Hollopeter," she said, "I have seen considerable statuary in the course of my life, both Parian and wax, and I say this to you: I never see a statue yet with clothes that I would say fitted,--where there was any!" she added, grimly, and compressed her lips. "As to hanging sheets and the like of that on human beings, as if they was clo'es-horses," she went on, "it's no part of the trade I was brought up to, and I've no idee of beginning at my time of life, and so I tell you. Now my advice to you is this: give up all this foolishness of a procession, and have a reception at the house, or the _mu_seum, or whatever it is to be called from now on. Have it a pink tea, if you like, and I'll get up some real tasty dresses for the girls, the few there is, and the ladies can receive. That'll part the cats from the kittens, and I dunno's there's anything else will. The _i_dea of 'Lize Goby in white muslin! She'd look like lobster and white of egg, and so I told her. "The fact is, Pindar," Miss Prudence went on, more gently, laying down the shears for an instant, "you and Homer was both brought up real peculiar, and you're feeling it now. I don't mean to set in jedgment on your Ma, far from it; but look at the way it has worked out. Homer is a poet; well, luckily for him, he got into the post-office, where it didn't do a mite of harm. Homer is well liked and respected by all in this village," she added, benevolently, "and there was no one but rejoiced at his being left well off. But you, Pindar, took to the Drayma. Well, I've nothing to say against the Drayma, either, because I've had no experience of it, nor wished to have, only this: it never had any holt in this village, and when you try to bring it here, you make a big mistake. What is it, P'nel'pe?" Miss Penny, kindest soul in the village where so many are kind, had been hovering uneasily about the door during this interview. She respected Sister Prudence's judgment highly, and her own cheerful common sense forced her to agree with it in this instance; and yet her heart ached to see Mr. Pindar--such an elegant man!--sitting forlorn and dejected, with drooping head and wings, he who had entered with so jaunty a stride, Importance throned on his brow and the Dramatic Moment flapping in his cloak. She did wish Sister Prudence had not been quite so severe. But now Miss Penny looked in, with anxious eyes and heightened color. "Excuse _me_," she said. "I see some of the ladies comin', Sister, and I thought likely they was comin' to try on. I didn't know but Mr. Hollopeter would wish--" She paused to listen, and then hurried back, for already the little shop was full of voices. "Is Prudence in, Penny? Has she got that polonay ready to try on, think?" "Penny, I want to know if you've got any linin's to match this pink cheese-cloth; it don't hardly show over white."