You ought to come and hear it , Miss Lloyd . '' The pedlar said this out of bravado , merely to show he was n't scared of the Old Lady , for all her grand airs . The Old Lady made no answer , and he thought he had offended her . He went away , wishing he had n't said it . Had he but known it , the Old Lady had forgotten the existence of all and any egg pedlars . He had blotted himself and his insignificance out of her consciousness by his last sentence . All her thoughts , feelings , and wishes were submerged in a very whirlpool of desire to hear Sylvia sing that solo . She went into the house in a tumult and tried to conquer that desire . She could not do it , even thought she summoned all her pride to her aid . Pride said : `` You will have to go to church to hear her . You have n't fit clothes to go to church in . Think what a figure you will make before them all . '' But , for the first time , a more insistent voice than pride spoke to her soul -- and , for the first time , the Old Lady listened to it . It was too true that she had never gone to church since the day on which she had to begin wearing her mother 's silk dresses . The Old Lady herself thought that this was very wicked ; and she tried to atone by keeping Sunday very strictly , and always having a little service of her own , morning and evening . She sang three hymns in her cracked voice , prayed aloud , and read a sermon . But she could not bring herself to go to church in her out-of-date clothes -- she , who had once set the fashions in Spencervale , and the longer she stayed away , the more impossible it seemed that she should ever again go . Now the impossible had become , not only possible , but insistent . She must go to church and hear Sylvia sing , no matter how ridiculous she appeared , no matter how people talked and laughed at her . Spencervale congregation had a mild sensation the next afternoon .
Just XXXXX the opening of service Old Lady Lloyd walked up the aisle and sat down in the long-unoccupied Lloyd pew , in front of the pulpit .
at before first for in into morning of that to