Laddie, and Miss Toosey's Mission

Miss Toosey always wore a black silk dress on Sunday, and went three times to church. Morning, afternoon, and evening, as soon as the bell changed at the quarter, that black silk dress came out of Miss Toosey's little house in North Street, turned the corner into High Street, crossed the Marketplace, passed under the archway into the churchyard, in at the west door, and up the middle aisle, past the free seats, which occupy the lower end of Martel church, and stopped at the second pew on the left-hand side, one sitting in which has been rented by Miss Toosey for many years. This pew is immediately in front of the church-wardens' seat, where those two dignitaries sit majestically, with a long rod placed conveniently on either hand, ready to be seized at a moment's notice, to execute judgment on youthful offenders in the free seats, though the well-known fact that generations of paint and varnish have made them fixtures somewhat takes off from the respect and awe felt for them. Miss Toosey is short, and the pew-door has a tendency to stick; and when you have a Bible, prayer-book, hymn-book, spectacle-case, and umbrella in your hands, you cannot enter into a struggle on equal terms; and so when Mr. Churchwarden Wyatt happens to be in church in time, he leans over and opens the pew-door for Miss Toosey, "and very kind of him, too, a most gentlemanly man Mr. Wyatt is, my dear."

The black silk was quite a part of Sunday in Miss Toosey's mind, and therefore holy, to a certain extent. She would have considered it disrespectful to the day to put on any other dress, and no stress of weather could prevent her wearing it; indeed, she thought it decidedly a want of trust in Providence to fear the heavy rain or deep snow might injure it.