Hall. Settling himself into a comfortable attitude, he laid his head back, and in a few minutes was snoring audibly. Madam Passmore generally made efforts, more or less violent, to remain awake, for about a quarter of an hour; and then, succumbing to the inevitable, followed her husband's example. Henrietta kept awake and immovable; so did Harry; but Isabella generally slept for above half the sermon, and Lucy would have followed her example had she dared, the fear of her eldest sister just opposite her keeping her decorous. The discourse was certainly not calculated to arouse a somnolent ear. Dr. Braithwaite generally began his sermon in some such style as this:--"That most learned doctor of the schools, styled by them of his age the Angelical Doctor,[7] whose words were as honey, yea, were full of sweetness and delight unto the ears of such as followed him, did in that greatest and most mellifluent of the writings wherewith he regaled his study, did, I say, observe, for the edification of the whole Church, and the great profit of them that should come after"--and then came a shower-bath of Latin dashing down upon the unlearned ears of his congregation. Greek he rarely quoted, since there was no one in the parish who understood it but himself; so that it was but seldom that he impressed the farmers with a due sense of the heights and depths of his learning by uttering a few words of that classic tongue; and whether his quotation were from Pindar or St. Paul, made no difference to them. Until her conversation with Lucy and old Cicely on the previous evening, Celia had been in the habit of considering the sermon as something with which she had nothing to do, except to sit it out with patience and decorum. She was beginning to think differently now, and she tried hard to follow Dr. Braithwaite this morning through his discourse of an hour and three-quarters. But the sentences were long, the style involved, and the worthy Doctor had got hold of a very unpromising subject. He was preaching upon the ceremony of baptism in the primitive Church, and its relation to the heresy of the Manichæans; and after half an hour, during which she felt confused amid a throng of exorcisms, white robes, catechumens, deacons, immersions, fire-worshippers, Arians, Pelagians, and Gnostics, Celia gave up her hopeless task. Old Cicely sat quite still, her eyes fixed on the closed prayer-book on her knee, a soft, pleased smile every now and then flitting across her countenance; and Celia longed to know of what she was thinking, which appeared to be so much more interesting than Dr. Braithwaite's Manichæans.