The necessary atmosphere having been duly created, those two powerful engines, Prayer and Fasting, were now set in motion. The latter, to be just, was of little account: its operation merely involved the omission of afternoon tea and the substitution of cold supper for ordinary dinner. But the devotional programme of the Clegg Sunday was an exacting business. It opened with family prayers at eight-thirty a.m., including an extemporary supplication by the master of the house. Catechism came at nine-thirty, Church at eleven o’clock. The household were conveyed thither in the Rolls-Royce. In the course of time, as the glory of that extremely new vehicle faded, and the task of making an impression upon the neighbourhood accomplished itself, the young Cleggs gloomily foresaw a still further extension of Sabbath observance, in the direction of pedestrian exercise. Meanwhile, they covered the three miles to church in the car, and were thankful for small mercies. After one o’clock dinner, the family sang hymns. Marjorie accompanied—not very convincingly, owing to the presence of a surreptitious novel or volume of poetry propped upon the music-rest beside the hymn-book. You cannot engage in psalmody and mental culture simultaneously with any degree of plausibility. The younger children sang a shrill soprano; brothers Amos and Joe growled self-consciously an octave—sometimes two octaves—lower. Sister Amy—a plain but intensely pious child of fourteen—offered a windy and unmelodious contribution which she termed "seconds." Mrs. Clegg sang—as she did everything else—dutifully, and slightly apologetically. Mr. Clegg sang what he had imagined for more than thirty years to be tenor, inciting his fellow-choristers to continued effort by beating time with his hymn-book, until post-prandial drowsiness intervened, and he retired to bed, with all his clothes on, for his Sabbath nap. During this interval the family enjoyed a slight respite from Sabbath observance—all, that is, but the younger members, who received instructions in Biblical history from two small and not uninteresting manuals, entitled _Peep of Day_ and _Line Upon Line_, with maternal additions and elucidations of a somewhat surprising character. At six o’clock the chauffeur was once more called upon to observe the Sabbath by conveying the family to evening service at the parish church. The small fry, in consideration of _Peep of Day_ and _Line Upon Line_, were permitted to go to bed. After cold supper at eight-thirty, the devotional exercises of the day petered out with a second instalment of family prayers, including what brother Joe (Marjorie’s accomplice and pet) was wont to describe as "a final solo from Pa." After that, the exhausted household retired to rest, leaving the master to relax himself from the spiritual tension of the day with weak whisky-and-water.