The next day was Sunday, and was passed in absolute tranquillity². Nothing was said either by Mr Whittlestaff or by Mary Lawrie; nor, to the eyes of those among whom they lived, was there anything to show that their minds were disturbed. They went to church in the morning, as was usual with them, and Mary went also to the evening service. It was quite pleasant to see Mrs Baggett start for her slow Sabbath morning walk, and to observe how her appearance altogether belied³ that idea of rags and tatters which she had given as to her own wardrobe. A nicer dressed old lady, or a more becoming black silk gown, you shall not see on a Sunday morning making her way to any country church in England. While she was looking so pleasant and demure,—one may say almost so handsome, in her old-fashioned and apparently⁴ new bonnet,—what could have been her thoughts respecting the red-nosed, one-legged warrior⁵, and her intended life, to be passed in fetching two-penn'orths of gin for him, and her endeavours to get for him a morsel⁶ of wholesome⁷ food? She had had her breakfast out of her own china tea-cup, which she used to boast was her own property, as it had been given to her by Mr Whittlestaff's mother, and had had her little drop of cream, and, to tell the truth, her boiled egg, which she always had on a Sunday morning, to enable her to listen to the long sermon of the Rev⁸ Mr Lowlad. She would talk of her hopes and her burdens, and undoubtedly⁹ she was in earnest. But she certainly did seem to make her hay very comfortably while the sun shone.

Everything on this Sunday morning was pleasant, or apparently pleasant, at Croker's Hall. In the evening, when Mary and the maid-servants went to church, leaving Mrs Baggett at home to look after the house and go to sleep, Mr Whittlestaff walked off to the wooded path with his Horace. He did not read it very long. The bits which he did usually read never amounted to much at a time. He would take a few lines and then digest them

分享到：