And so at the moment--or at least very like one--Honor felt that she had earned the right to be considered; for she was--absurd as it may seem to those among my readers who have either outlived, or have never been subject to, the weakness of personal vanity--about to make what was to her a great, ay even a heroic, sacrifice. She had so looked forward to appearing her very best that day. Religion, I grieve to confess, had little enough to do (when, alas I has it ever much?) with the fitting on of the best gown, and the extra smoothing of the shining hair. In nine cases out of ten, the remembering of the Sabbath-day does not mean the keeping of it holy. Jill, it is to be feared, goes to church to show herself; while Jack, in his best coat and Sunday hat, goes through the same ceremony that he may join his sweetheart. Can we wonder that too often these respective parties come to grief, and, like the Jack and Jill in the story-book, wounds and bruises (metaphorically speaking) are the well-deserved consequences of their levity and _supercherie_? Seeing then that the female mind is, both from nature and habit, loth to believe in the “glaring impotence” of “dress,” we may excuse this poor Honor for her petulance, and for the little angry jerk with which she threw open the old mahogany wardrobe, and drew from it the contemned and faded specimen of bygone finery. With a flushed face, and hands that trembled a little with the passing irritation of the moment, she tied the tumbled strings under her dainty chin, and then, without stopping to look at her “shabby” self in the glass, she hastened down the stairs.