establishment in which she was educated. Had she been a mother she would
have christened her boys such names as Saul or Sisera in preference to
Jacob or David, neither of whom she admired. At school she had used
to side with the Philistines in several battles, and had wondered if
Pontius Pilate were as handsome as he was frank and fair.

Thus she was a girl of some forwardness of mind, indeed, weighed in
relation to her situation among the very rearward of thinkers, very
original. Her instincts towards social non-comformity were at the root
of this. In the matter of holidays, her mood was that of horses who,
when turned out to grass, enjoy looking upon their kind at work on the
highway. She only valued rest to herself when it came in the midst of
other people's labour. Hence she hated Sundays when all was at rest, and
often said they would be the death of her. To see the heathmen in their
Sunday condition, that is, with their hands in their pockets, their
boots newly oiled, and not laced up (a particularly Sunday sign),
walking leisurely among the turves and furze-faggots they had cut during
the week, and kicking them critically as if their use were unknown, was
a fearful heaviness to her. To relieve the tedium of this untimely day
she would overhaul the cupboards containing her grandfather's old charts
and other rubbish, humming Saturday-night ballads of the country people
the while. But on Saturday nights she would frequently sing a psalm, and
it was always on a weekday that she read the Bible, that she might be
unoppressed with a sense of doing her duty.

Such views of life were to some extent the natural begettings of her
situation upon her nature. To dwell on a heath without studying its
meanings was like wedding a foreigner without learning his tongue. The
subtle beauties of the heath were lost to Eustacia; she only caught its
vapours. An environment which would have made a contented woman a poet,