  WHEN meeting-bells began to toll, And pious folk began to pass, She deftly tied her bonnet on, The little, sober meeting lass, All in her neat, white-curtained room, before her tiny looking-glass. So nicely, round her lady-cheeks, She smoothed her hands of glossy hair, And innocently wondered if Her bonnet did not make her fair— Then sternly chid her foolish heart for harbouring such fancies there. So square she tied the satin strings, And set the bows beneath her chin; Then smiled to see how sweet she looked; Then thought her vanity a sin, And she must put such thoughts away before the sermon should begin. But, sitting ’neath the preachÈd Word, Demurely in her father’s pew, She thought about her bonnet still,— Yes, all the parson’s sermon through,— Yet sitting there with peaceful face, The reflex of her simple soul, She looked to be a very saint— And maybe was one, on the whole— Only that her pretty bonnet kept away the aureole. Mary E. Wilkins. |
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