In the midst of this drab assemblage there entered late and rustlingly a tall, slow-moving woman in a city-bought cloak and a bonnet quite unlike the vintage millinery of High Prairie. As she came down the aisle Selina thought she was like a full-sailed frigate. An ample woman, with a fine fair skin and a ripe red mouth; a high firm bosom and great thighs that moved rhythmically, slowly. She had thick, insolent eyelids. Her hands, as she turned the leaves of her hymn book, were smooth and white. As she entered there was a little rustle throughout the congregation; a craning of necks. Though she was bustled and flounced and panniered, you thought, curiously enough, of those lolling white-fleshed and unconventional ladies whom the sixteenth century painters were always portraying as having their toe nails cut with nothing on. “Who’s that?” whispered Selina to Maartje. “Widow Paarlenberg. She is rich like anything.” “Yes?” Selina was fascinated. “Look once how she makes eyes at him.” “At him? Who? Who?” “Pervus DeJong. By Gerrit Pon he is sitting with the blue shirt and sad looking so.” Selina craned, peered. “The—oh—he’s very good looking, isn’t he?” “Sure. Widow Paarlenberg is stuck on him. See how she—Sh-sh-sh!—Reverend Dekker looks at us. I tell you after.” Selina decided she’d come to church oftener. The service went on, dull, heavy. It was in English and Dutch. She heard scarcely a word of it. The Widow Paarlenberg and this Pervus DeJong occupied her thoughts. She decided, without malice, that the widow resembled one of the sleekest of the pink porkers rooting in Klaas Pool’s barnyard, waiting to be cut into Christmas meat. The Widow Paarlenberg turned and smiled. Her eyes were slippery (Selina’s term). Her mouth became loose and wide with one corner sliding down a trifle into something very like a leer. With one surge the Dutch Reformed congregation leaned forward to see how Pervus DeJong would respond to this public mark of favour. His gaze was stern, unsmiling. His eyes were fixed on that extremely dull gentleman, the Reverend Dekker. “He’s annoyed,” thought Selina, and was pleased at the thought. “Well, I may not be a widow, but I’m sure that’s not the way.” And then: “Now I wonder what it’s like when _he_ smiles.” According to fiction as Selina had found it in the _Fireside Companion_ and elsewhere, he should have turned at this moment, irresistibly drawn by the magnetism of her gaze, and smiled a rare sweet smile that lighted up his stern young face. But he did not. He yawned suddenly and capaciously. The Reformed Dutch congregation leaned back feeling cheated. Handsome, certainly, Selina reflected. But then, probably Klaas Pool, too, had been handsome a few years ago.