Edgar had then fallen back on the theory that the figures were portraits of the persons whom the windows commemorated. Howard triumphantly queried why, then, should the legend, “Sacred to the memory of Walter, beloved husband of Mary Bird Ferris,” appear under a tall woman in dark green glass with a most feminine amount of hair and a long red sash? Edgar was staggered, but suddenly recalled his father’s glowing account of a costume ball given by the Knights of Pythias, in which many of the Knights appeared in women’s clothes, one in particular, the proprietor of a fish market, having rented a long and flowing wig the better to deceive his fellow-Knights and their delighted guests. This had impressed Edgar as intensely humorous; he greatly enjoyed picturing the scene to his imagination, and he strengthened his wavering infallibility by declaring that the beloved husband of Mary Bird Ferris was beyond doubt a Pythian in costume. This had silenced Howard for a week, but one afternoon at evensong, just before the electric bell sounded in the robing-room to summon them to the hall, he had rapidly inquired in a hissing whisper, “Who that white puppy carryin’ the flag in the round window on the side, where the bird was, was a picture of?” The bird was the lectern-eagle, and neither of the antagonists had ever seen a lamb. Edgar had recognized the fact that it was a poorly drawn puppy, and he did not believe that it could possibly have balanced in one crooked-up knee and at that perilous angle any such banner as the artist had given it. It was also crushingly apparent to him that no Knight of Pythias, with all the assistance in the world, could transform himself into such a woolly, curly, four-legged object as that. [Illustration: “’_Who that white puppy carryin’ the flag ... was._’”] Then why should the brass plate beneath it declare that this rose-window was placed in “loving memory of Alice Helen Worden, who departed this life June nineteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety”? That was no name for a puppy, to begin with. The whole affair irritated Edgar exceedingly. He saw no explanation whatever. He perceived that he should have to fight the first alto. This was not only a great responsibility in itself, but the necessity of evading the parental eye added to the nervous strain, and the consciousness that on this particular Sunday afternoon Mr. Ogden occupied one of the rear pews, with the idea of seeing how he behaved during service, and subsequently accompanying him home, so weighed upon the spirits of the first soprano that William Waters accomplished the choir steps, in the recessional, without a stumble.