Anna had a very sweet voice and had been asked to join the choir, and during the anthem, she fixed her long-lashed blue eyes seriously upon the women members, studying, not their voices nor their manner of using their vocal organs, but their attitude and demeanour. As she saw herself in fancy standing behind the low railing in her new green suit and ‘nifty’ hat, she wondered if it wouldn’t be an exceedingly pleasant change for the congregation to have a younger person to gaze upon and one who had more regard for the current fashions. And dear me! Every blooming member of the present choir had hair of the same colour, something between brown and drab. Anna said to herself that when she should stand up among them to sing, if her long yellow braid with the curl at the end did not of its own accord flop over her shoulder, she would flop it,--it stood out so picturesquely against the green. Here in the pew, of course, it was just as well to let it hang down her back, for Miss Penny sat very near the pulpit. So near, indeed, that she was directly in front of Mr. Langley,--which reflection induced another that when she should sit with the choir, Mr. Langley couldn’t see her at all. That seemed a pity, and yet--Anna wondered if he saw her now,--saw her, that is, not as a soul but as a young girl in a new suit, with yellow hair shining like pale gold against it. He might possibly notice the latter, for his beloved little Ella May, who had died before the Millers had come to Farleigh, had had long golden curls. Suddenly the girl recalled her roving gaze. Mr. Langley was preaching, and Anna hadn’t even heard the text! It was right down mean, she said to herself, when anyone worked as hard as he did to write such beautiful sermons for people not to listen to every single word. He didn’t write absolutely new sermons, indeed, he had so many on hand after preaching here for years and years and years; but they were new to the greater part of the congregation and practically so to all of them, for he worked over them, added new matter and quoted from new poems whose authors had been at school or in their cradles when the sermons were first composed. Moreover they were quite fresh to Anna.