She parted from them at Ansdore, and she and Ellen went in to their
Sunday's dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. After this the day
would proceed according to the well-laid ceremonial that Joanna loved.
Little Ellen, with a pinafore tied over her Sabbath splendours, would go
into the kitchen to sit with the maids--get into their laps, turn over
their picture Bibles, examine their one or two trinkets and strings of
beads which they always brought into the kitchen on Sunday. Meanwhile
Joanna would sit in state in the parlour, her feet on a footstool, on
her lap a volume of Spurgeon's sermons. In the old days it had always
been her father who read sermons, but now he was dead she had taken over
this part of his duties with the rest, and if the afternoon generally
ended in sleep, sleep was a necessary part of a well-kept Sabbath day.




§13

When Christmas came that year, Joanna was inspired to celebrate it with
a party. The Christmas before she had been in mourning, but in her
father's day it had been usual to invite a few respectable farmers to a
respectable revel, beginning with high tea, then proceeding through
whist to a hot supper. Joanna would have failed in her duty to "poor
father" if she had not maintained this custom, and she would have failed
in consistency with herself if she had not improved upon it--embellished
it with one or two ornate touches, which lifted it out of its prosaic
rut of similarity to a dozen entertainments given at a dozen farms, and
made it a rather wonderful and terrible occasion to most dwellers on the
Marsh.