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 But she could not bring herself to go to church in her out-of-date clothes -- she , who had once set the fashions in Spencervale , and the longer she stayed away , the more impossible it seemed that she should ever again go .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 before 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 . The Old Lady 's very soul was writhing within her . She recalled the reflection she had seen in her mirror before she left -- the old black silk in the mode of thirty years agone and the queer little bonnet of shirred black satin . She thought how absurd she must look in the eyes of her world . As a matter of fact , she did not look in the least absurd . Some women might have ; but the Old Lady 's stately distinction of carriage and figure was so subtly commanding that it did away with the consideration of garmenting altogether . The Old Lady did not know this .
But she did know that Mrs. Kimball , the storekeeper 's wife , presently rustled XXXXX the next pew in the very latest fashion of fabric and mode ; she and Mrs. Kimball were the same age , and there had been a time when the latter had been content to imitate Margaret Lloyd 's costumes at a humble distance .
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