Gervase, who is not an early riser, is then taking his coffee in bed as twelve strikes. He detests an English Sunday: although at Surrenden it is disguised as much as possible to look like any other day, still there is a Sunday feeling in the air, and Usk does not like people to play cards on Sundays: it is his way of being virtuous vicariously.
"Primitive Christianity," says Brandolin, touching the white feathers of Dodo's hat and the white lace on her short skirts.
"We only go to sleep," replies the child, disconsolately. "We might just as well go to sleep at home; and it is so hot in that pew, with all that red cloth!"
"My love!" says Dulcia Waverley, scandalized.
"Lady Waverley don't go to sleep!" cries the Babe, in his terribly clear little voice. "She was writing in her hymn-book and showing it to papa."
No one appears to hear this indiscreet remark except Dodo, who laughs somewhat rudely.
"I was trying to remember the hymn of Faber's 'Longing for God,'" says Lady Waverley, who is never known to be at a loss. "The last verse escapes me. Can any one recall it? It is so lamentable that sectarianism prevents those hymns from being used in Protestant churches."
But no one there present is religious enough or poetic enough to help her to the missing lines.
"There is so little religious feeling anywhere in England," she remarks, with a sigh.
"It's the confounded levelling that destroys it," says Usk, echoing the sigh.