In our Puritan homes there was altogether another stamp of religion. Whatever it might lack in grace and taste, it was a religion for men as much as for women, a religion for the camp as much as the oratory. Rough it might be often, and stern. It was never feeble. It had no two standards of holiness for clergy and laity, men and women. All men and women, we were taught, were called to love God with the whole heart; to serve him at all times. If we obeyed we were still (in our sinfulness) ever doing less than duty. If we disobeyed, we were in revolt against the King of heaven. There were no neutrals in that war, no reserves in that obedience. And unhappily the Lady Lucy's family, in surrendering any hope of reaching her eminence of piety, surrendered more. For, it is not elevating, it is lowering, to have constantly before us an image of holiness which we admire but do not imitate. In the morning the household met in the Family Chapel (the Parish Church being for the present avoided until danger of the infectious sickness was over). In the afternoon, Sir Walter and his sons loyally played at tennis and bowls with the young men of the household. And in the evening there was a dance in the hall, in which all joined. The merriment was loud, and reached Lettice and me where we sat with the Lady Lucy and her lute. Yet now and then one of the boys would come in and complain of the tedium of the day. It was such an interruption, they said, to the employments of the week, and just at the best season in the year for hunting, and with their father's hounds in perfect condition and training. Tennis they said, was all very well for boys, and Morris-dancing for girls, but there was no real sport in such things after all, except to fill up an idle hour or two. The next day there was to be a rare bear-baiting at Huntingdon, and the day after a cock-fight in the next village. And at the beginning of the following week Sir Walter had promised to give them a bull to be baited. And the Book of Sports, in their opinion, let the Puritans say what they like, was too rigid by half in prohibiting such true old English sports on Sundays. The Lady Lucy said a few pitiful tender words on behalf of Sir Walter's bull, which they listened to without the slightest disrespect, or the slightest change of mind--kissing her hand and laughingly vowing she was too tender and sweet for this world at all, and that if she had had the making of it she would certainly have left bears and bulls altogether out of the creation. It was without doubt a long and dreary Sunday to Roger and me. It would naturally have been long and melancholy anywhere without our Father. I missed the busy work of the week, which made it not only a sacred day but a holiday. I missed Aunt Dorothy's laws which made our liberty precious. But to Roger the day had had other trials. In the evening he and I had a few minutes alone together in the window of the drawing-chamber.