On the Sunday morning, of course, we all attended Divine Service. Peter Ball came too and read the lessons. He is called one of the pillars of the church. He once spoke to some men who were lounging about outside while the service was proceeding, and told them that he looked to them to be pillars too. They sniggered, because they felt ashamed, and one of them said, "Ay, Sir, but aren't we men the buttresses a-leaning up against it and propping it up like?" Peter was only shocked. We workers could not attend much on this particular occasion, any more than a cook can enjoy the dinner she has cooked. We could not take our eyes off our own special rail that we had wreathed, and kept hoping our flowers wouldn't topple suddenly because we hadn't tied them securely enough, or wilt during the sermon. I noticed a curious sort of doll, standing on the altar-steps, dressed in three tissue-paper flounces and a sash. As we came out I asked old John Peacock what it was, and he said, "Why, that wor t' Kern babby!" I was no wiser. But Ariadne, who dotes on superstitions, said she would ask the Vicar. She wrote him a pretty note in her all backwards hand, and said she felt sure the doll on the altar-steps was a heathen survival of some sort. This was his answer; he was pleased. "MY DEAR MISS VERO-TAYLOR, "Your interest in the study of folk-lore is highly commendable in one so young. The little mannikin--or rather womankin--is, as you aptly conjecture, a remnant of a custom dating from a period of the very remotest antiquity. In our Northumbrian villages it is the custom, the moment the sickle is laid down, for the villagers to dress the last sheaf in tawdry finery and carry it through the streets, finally when it presides at the Harvest, or Mell Supper, and the people dance round it singing: 'Blest be the day that Christ was born! We've getten Mell of _Ball's_ corn! It's well bun' and better shorn! Hip! Hip! Hurray!' "This custom was found, however, so prevocative of disorderly scenes that my revered predecessor here decreed that in future the Mell Doll (or Kern baby) should be simply placed on the altar-steps during Divine Service. Is it not wonderful to reflect that this grotesque image prefigures no less a personage than Ceres, the goddess of plenty, the Frigga of the Teutons, sometimes called Freia, Frey, conf. Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, passim--" "Oh yes, pass him, pass him!" said Peter impatiently, who won't however let any one else make fun of the church, and scolded Christina for saying, "Rather a come-down for a goddess, wasn't it?"