CHAPTER III.
THE ARBOR AT THORNWICK.
The next day was Sunday at last, a day dear to all who do anything like their duty in the week, whether they go to church or not.

For Mary, she went to the Baptist chapel; it was her custom, rendered holy by the companionship of her father.

But this day it was with more than ordinary restlessness and lack of interest that she stood, knelt, and sat, through the routine of observance; for old Mr.Duppa was certainly duller than usual: how could it be otherwise, when he had been preparing to spend a mortal hour in descanting on the reasons which necessitated the separation of all true Baptists from all brother-believers?
The narrow, high-souled little man--for a soul as well as a forehead can be both high and narrow--was dull that morning because he spoke out of his narrowness, and not out of his height; and Mary was better justified in feeling bored than even when George Turnbull plagued her with his vulgar attentions.

When she got out at last, sedate as she was, she could hardly help skipping along the street by her father's side.

Far better than chapel was their nice little cold dinner together, in their only sitting-room, redolent of the multifarious goods piled around it on all the rest of the floor.
Greater yet was the following pleasure--of making her father lie down on the sofa, and reading him to sleep, after which she would doze a little herself, and dream a little, in the great chair that had been her grandmother's.