"How dare you, Jane Lavender," demanded Jenny's superior officer, "let your voice be heard at the Colonel's table?" "If you please, Mrs Millicent," answered Jenny, who was rather frightened, "I think only Mr Wright heard it." "You think! Pray, what business have you to think? Mrs Jane does not pay you for thinking, I'm sure." Jenny was too much cowed to say what she thought--that Mrs Jane did not pay her extra to hold her tongue. She only ventured on a timid suggestion that "they talked at the lower table." "Don't quote the lower table to me, you vulgar girl! You deserve to be there, for your manners are not fit for the upper. Everybody knows the lower table is only for the household"--a word which then meant the servants--"but those who sit at the upper, and belong to the family, must hold their tongues. If we did not, strangers might take us for the gentlewomen." Jenny silently and earnestly wished they would. "Now then, go into the parlour and behave yourself!" was the concluding order from Millicent. Poor Jenny escaped into the parlour, with a longing wish in her heart for the old farmhouse kitchen, where nobody thought of putting a lock upon her lips. She felt she was buying her dignities very dear. What was she to do all this long Sunday afternoon? Being Sunday, of course she could not employ herself with needlework; and though she was fond of music, and was a fairly good performer on the virginals, she did not dare to make a noise. She was not much of a reader, and if she had been, there were no books within her reach but the Bible and a cookery book, on the former of which, for private reading, Jenny looked as a mere precursor of the undertaker. Sunday afternoon and evening, at the farmhouse, were the chief times of the week for enjoyment. There were sure to be visitors, plenty of talk and music, and afterwards a dance: for only the Puritans regarded the Sabbath as anything but a day for amusement, after morning service was over. Farmer Lavender, though a sensible and respectable man in his way, was not a Puritan; and though his mother did not much like Sunday dancing, she had not set her face so determinately against it as to forbid it to the girls. The long use of _The Book of Sports_, set forth by authority, and positively compelling such ways of spending the Sabbath evening, had blunted the perception of many well-meaning people. The idea was that people must amuse themselves, or they would spend their leisure time in plotting treason! and the rulers having been what we should call Ritualists, they considered that the holiness of the day ended when Divine service was over, and people were thenceforward entitled to do anything they liked. Yet there in the Bible was the Lord's command to "turn away from doing their pleasure on His holy day." CHAPTER THREE. THE GOLD THAT GLITTERS.