'Ambrose, God's will must be done, let us trust him.'
But the boy's serious mood passed, and he was now capering about and singing as he went in a joyous monotone as he went to find Ned in the farmyard.
'I am to see the sports on the morrow. I'm to see the sports on the green.'
The words reached other ears than Ned's. His grandmother came out of the bakehouse, where she had been storing piles of loaves on a high shelf, which had just been taken from the oven, and called out,—
'Sports on the Lord's Day, what does the child say? No one who eats my bread shall see that day profaned. The wrath of the Almighty will fall on their heads, whoever they be, mind that, Mary Gifford, mind that! Ay, I know what you will say, that the Queen lends her countenance to them, and your grand folk in the great house, but as sure as you live, Mary Gifford, a curse will fall on your head if you let that child witness this wickedness.'
Mary took refuge in silence, but her stepmother's words sounded in her ears like a knell.
For herself she would willingly have dispensed with games and sports on Sundays. Her sympathies were with those who, taking the just view of the seventh day, believed that God had ordained it for the refreshment both of body and soul—a day when, free from the labours of this toilsome world, the body should rest, and the soul have quiet and leisure for meditation in private, and for prayer and praise in the services appointed by the Church.
Sports and merry-making were quite as much out of harmony with Mary Gifford's feelings as they were with her stepmother's, but, in the due observance of Sunday, as in many other things, the extreme Puritan failed to influence those around them by their harsh insistence on the letter which killeth, and the utter absence of that spirit of love which giveth life.
The villagers assembled in the churchyard on this Sunday morning were not so numerous as sometimes, and the pew occupied by the Sidneys, when the family was in residence at the Park, was empty.
Mary Gifford and her boy, as they knelt together by a bench near the chancel steps, attracted the attention of the old Rector. He had seen them before, and had many times exchanged a kindly greeting with Mary and complimented Lucy on her 'lilies and roses,' and asked in a jocose way for that good and amiable lady, their stepmother! But there was something in Mary's attitude and rapt devotion as the light of the east window fell on her, that struck the good old man as unusual.