orate Christmas than mine. They've had as good a
dinner, a handsomer tree, and as many presents as some well-off people.
It's all nonsense, putting notions in their heads when they're as poor
as poverty itself and have their living to make. I don't approve of it.
Not at all."

She bristled so stiff and shook her head so vigorous that the little jet
ornaments on her bonnet just tinkled like bells, and one fell off.

Mrs. Christopher Pryor is one of the people who would like to tell the
Lord how to run this earth. She could run it. That He lets the rain fall
and sun shine on everybody alike is a thing she don't approve of either.
As for poor people, she thinks they ought to be thankful for breath, and
not expect more than enough to keep it from going out for good.

She's very decided in her views, and never keeps them to herself. It's
the one thing she gives away. Everything else she holds on to with such
a grip that it keeps her upper lip so pressed down on her under lip that
she breathes through her nose most of the time.

She's a very curious shape. Being stout, she has to hold her head up to
keep her chin off her fatness; and she goes in so at the waist, coming
out top and bottom, that you would think something in her would get
jammed out of place. You really would.

There are seven daughters. No sons. The boys call their place Hen-House.
There is a husband, but nobody seems to notice him; and when with his
wife, he always walks behind.

Miss Webb says she's sorry for a man whose wife is too active in the
church. Mrs. Pryor is. She leads all the responses; and as for the
chants, she takes them right out of the choir's mouth and soars off with
them.

I never could bear her; and when I heard her say those words to Mrs.
Marsden, I came right down to earth and was Martha Cary in a minute. I'd
been Mary all day, and, like a splash in a mud-puddle, she made me
Martha; and I heard myself say:

"No, Mrs. Pryor, we know you don't approve. You never yet have let a
child here forget she was a Charity child, and only people who make
others happy will approve."

Then I walked away as quiet as a Nun's daughter. But I was burning hot
all the same, and so surprised at the way Martha spoke, so serious and
unlike the way she usually speaks when mad, that I had to go on the back
porch and make snowballs and throw hard at something before I was all
right again.

But I wouldn't let it ruin my beautiful day. I wouldn't.

That