Then they had their tea, and then her father always went to see the minister before chapel in the evening.
When he was gone, Mary would put on her pretty straw bonnet, and set out to visit Letty Lovel at Thornwick.

Some of the church-members thought this habit of taking a walk, instead of going again to the chapel, very worldly, and did not scruple to let her know their opinion; but, so long as her father was satisfied with her, Mary did not care a straw for the world besides.

She was too much occupied with obedience to trouble her head about opinion, either her own or other people's.

Not until a question comes puzzling and troubling us so as to paralyze the energy of our obedience is there any necessity for its solution, or any probability of finding a real one.

A thousand foolish _doctrines_ may lie unquestioned in the mind, and never interfere with the growth or bliss of him who lives in active subordination of his life to the law of life: obedience will in time exorcise them, like many another worse devil.
It had drizzled all the morning from the clouds as well as from the pulpit, but, just as Mary stepped out of the kitchen-door, the sun stepped out of the last rain-cloud.