One of the latter , the biggest and ugliest in the graveyard , was sacred to the memory of a certain Alec Davis who had been born a Methodist but had taken to himself a Presbyterian bride of the Douglas clan . She had made him turn Presbyterian and kept him toeing the Presbyterian mark all his life . But when he died she did not dare to doom him to a lonely grave in the Presbyterian graveyard over-harbour . His people were all buried in the Methodist cemetery ; so Alec Davis went back to his own in death and his widow consoled herself by erecting a monument which cost more than any of the Methodists could afford . The Meredith children hated it , without just knowing why , but they loved the old , flat , bench-like stones with the tall grasses growing rankly about them . They made jolly seats for one thing . They were all sitting on one now . Jerry , tired of leap frog , was playing on a jew 's - harp . Carl was lovingly poring over a strange beetle he had found ; Una was trying to make a doll 's dress , and Faith , leaning back on her slender brown wrists , was swinging her bare feet in lively time to the jew 's - harp . Jerry had his father 's black hair and large black eyes , but in him the latter were flashing instead of dreamy . Faith , who came next to him , wore her beauty like a rose , careless and glowing . She had golden-brown eyes , golden-brown curls and crimson cheeks . She laughed too much to please her father 's congregation and had shocked old Mrs. Taylor , the disconsolate spouse of several departed husbands , by saucily declaring -- in the church-porch at that -- `` The world IS N'T a vale of tears , Mrs. Taylor . It 's a world of laughter . '' Little dreamy Una was not given to laughter . Her braids of straight , dead-black hair betrayed no lawless kinks , and her almond-shaped , dark-blue eyes had something wistful and sorrowful in them . Her mouth had a trick of falling open over her tiny white teeth , and a shy , meditative smile occasionally crept over her small face . She was much more sensitive to public opinion than Faith , and had an uneasy consciousness that there was something askew in their way of living . She longed to put it right , but did not know how . Now and then she dusted the furniture -- but it was so seldom she could find the duster because it was never in the same place twice .
And when the clothes-brush was to be XXXXX she tried to brush her father 's best suit on Saturdays , and once sewed on a missing button with coarse white thread .
IS dare flashing found given kept loved made poring sitting