The fact was that, of late, Sunday mornings had become for Dorcas the corner-stone of her week, and in this wise: it did not as a rule take long to get Elijah’s dinner under way; this done, Dorcas would take her chair into the doorway, and read her Bible. She generally chose the Book of Revelation, carefully forming the words with her lips and following each with gnarled and work-worn forefinger. With Dorcas, as with many people whose lives are somewhat hard and monotonous, the prospect of a suite of rooms in one of the many mansions was extremely pleasant. Moreover, the Cotswold peasant dearly loves any form of spectacle, and although Dorcas could not pronounce, far less understand, many of the words she met with, there was a sense of pageant all around her as she read; while her appreciation of the city which has "no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it," was as purely sensuous as that of any disciple of Wagner himself. "And now, a little wind and shy" scattered the apple-blossoms over the path, and the Sunday silence was broken by a clear child-voice. To Dorcas such sound was as the skirl of the pipes to a Highlander in a far country; her heart beat quick and her cheeks grew redder, and she rushed out to see who "was a-comin’"; for Dorcas had "put away four" in the "cemetrary" on the Fletborough road, and one had lived to be four years old. Besides, to let any one pass the Blue House without "givin’ of ’em good-day!" was a thing she had never done—"not once in twenty year." So she laid her Bible on the chair, covering it with a clean white handkerchief, and crossed the few feet of garden which lay between her cottage and the towing-path. A sturdy little boy, in reefer coat and muffin cap, with round, fresh little face, and cheeks pink as the petals of the apple-blossom nearest the calyx, danced with excitement on the bank as he watched his father gathering some yellow "flags" which grew at the water’s edge. The attendant father—parents and such were always a secondary consideration with Dorcas—was not very successful, as the ground was soft and slippery. "Is it wet down there, dad? Can I come? Oh, get that big one just over there! Won’t muth be pleased? What dirty boots you’ll have! Shall I hold your stick for you to cling on to?" Then he noticed Dorcas. "Good-morning!" said he with gay courtesy. "Isn’t it a fine May morning?" "It be that surely, little master!" answered Dorcas in high delight. Then "the little gentleman’s dada"—he never achieved a separate identity in the mind of Dorcas—scrambled up from the swamp in which he had been standing. He, too, proved most approachable, and she learned that the youthful potentate in the reefer jacket had never walked so far before, that the "scroped out old quarry" just beyond the Blue House was his destination, and that he would probably come again next Sunday.