‘That is not your concern,’ said Albinia, her spirit rising at the girls’ opposition. ‘I wish for obedience.’
Lucy went, Sophy leant against the table like a post. Albinia regretted that the first shot should have been fired for such a cause, and sat perplexing herself whether it were worse to give way, or to force the girls to read Holy Scripture in such a mood.
Lucy came flying down with the four books in her hands, and began officiously opening them before her sister, and exhorting her not to give way to sullenness—she ought to like to read the Bible—which of course made Sophy look crosser. The desire to establish her authority conquered the scruple about reverence. Albinia set them to read, and suffered for it. Lucy road flippantly; Sophy in the hoarse, dull, dogged voice of a naughty boy. She did not dare to expostulate, lest she should exasperate the tempers that she had roused.
‘Never mind,’ she thought, ‘when the institution is fixed, they will be more amenable.’
She tried a little examination afterwards, but not one answer was to be extracted from Sophy, and Lucy knew far less than the first class at Fairmead, and made her replies wide of the mark, with an air of satisfaction that nearly overthrew the young step-mother’s patience.
When Albinia took her Bible upstairs, she gave Sophy time to say what Lucy reported instantly on her entrance.
‘Dear me, mamma, here is Sophy declaring that you ought to be a charity-schoolmistress. You wont be angry with her, but it is so funny!’
‘If you were at my charity school, Lucy,’ said Albinia, ‘the first lesson I should give you would be against telling tales.’
Lucy subsided.
Albinia turned to Sophy. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘perhaps I pressed this on when you were not prepared for it, but I have always been used to think of it as a duty.’