Here the master and mistress came and went, regardless of each other, and of all household polity; but their meals were ready for them to the minute, when they chose to be there to eat them; the carriage came round like one of the puppets on the Strasburg clock; the house was quiet as a hospital; the bells were answered--all except the door-bell outside of calling hours--with swiftness; you could not soil your fingers anywhere--not even if the sweep had been that same morning; the manners of the servants--_when serving_--were unexceptionable; but the house was scarcely more of a home than one of the huge hotels characteristic of the age.
In the hall of it sat Mary for the space of an hour, not exactly learning the lesson Mrs.Perkin had intended to teach her, but learning more than one thing Mrs.Perkin was not yet capable of learning.

I can not say she was comfortable, for she was both cold and hungry; but she was far from miserable.

She had no small gift of patience, and had taught herself to look upon the less troubles of life as on a bad dream.

There are children, though not yet many, capable, through faith in their parents, of learning not a little by their experience, and Mary was one of such; from the first she received her father's lessons like one whose business it was to learn them, and had thereby come to learn where he had himself learned.

Hence she was not one to say _our Father in heaven_, and act as if there were no such Father, or as if he cared but little for his children.