After church came Sunday-school, which the children liked very much, and
then they went home to dinner, which was always the same on Sunday--cold
corned-beef, baked potatoes, and rice pudding. They did not go to church
in the afternoon unless they wished, but were pounced upon by Katy
instead, and forced to listen to the reading of _The Sunday Visitor_, a
religious paper, of which she was the editor. This paper was partly
written, partly printed, on a large sheet of foolscap, and had at the
top an ornamental device, in lead pencil, with "Sunday Visitor" in the
middle of it. The reading part began with a dull little piece of the
kind which grown people call an editorial, about "Neatness," or
"Obedience," or "Punctuality." The children always fidgeted when
listening to this, partly, I think, because it aggravated them to have
Katy recommending on paper, as very easy, the virtues which she herself
found it so hard to practise in real life. Next came anecdotes about
dogs and elephants and snakes, taken from the Natural History book, and
not very interesting, because the audience knew them by heart already. A
hymn or two followed, or a string of original verses, and, last of all,
a chapter of "Little Maria and Her Sisters," a dreadful tale, in which
Katy drew so much moral, and made such personal allusions to the faults
of the rest, that it was almost more than they could bear. In fact,
there had just been a nursery rebellion on the subject. You must know
that, for some weeks back, Katy had been too lazy to prepare any fresh
_Sunday Visitors_, and so had forced the children to sit in a row and
listen to the back numbers, which she read aloud from the very
beginning! "Little Maria" sounded much worse when taken in these large
doses, and Clover and Elsie, combining for once, made up their minds to
endure it no longer. So, watching their chance, they carried off the
whole edition, and poked it into the kitchen fire, where they watched it
burn with a mixture of fear and delight which it was comical to witness.
They dared not confess the deed, but it was impossible not to look