So after she had lingered at the door, to delight Gilbert by admiring his pony, she returned to the dining-room, where the girls were loading a small table in the window with piles of books and exercises, and Lucy was standing, looking all eagerness to show off her drawings. ‘Yes, my dear, but first we had better read. I have been talking to your papa, and we have settled that on Wednesdays and Fridays we will go to church; but on these days we will begin by reading the Psalms and Lessons.’ ‘Oh,’ said Lucy, ‘we never do that, except when we are at grandmamma’s.’ ‘Pray are you too old or too young for it?’ said Albinia. ‘We did it to please grandmamma,’ said Sophy. ‘Now you will do it to please me,’ said Albinia, ‘if for no better reason. Fetch your Bibles and Prayerbooks.’ ‘We shall never have time for our studies, I assure you, mamma,’ objected Lucy. ‘That is not your concern,’ said Albinia, her spirit rising at the girls’ opposition. ‘I wish for obedience.’ Lucy went, Sophy leant against the table like a post. Albinia regretted that the first shot should have been fired for such a cause, and sat perplexing herself whether it were worse to give way, or to force the girls to read Holy Scripture in such a mood. Lucy came flying down with the four books in her hands, and began officiously opening them before her sister, and exhorting her not to give way to sullenness--she ought to like to read the Bible--which of course made Sophy look crosser. The desire to establish her authority conquered the scruple about reverence. Albinia set them to read, and suffered for it. Lucy road flippantly; Sophy in the hoarse, dull, dogged voice of a naughty boy. She did not dare to expostulate, lest she should exasperate the tempers that she had roused. ‘Never mind,’ she thought, ‘when the institution is fixed, they will be more amenable.’ She tried a little examination afterwards, but not one answer was to be extracted from Sophy, and Lucy knew far less than the first class at Fairmead, and made her replies wide of the mark, with an air of satisfaction that nearly overthrew the young step-mother’s patience. When Albinia took her Bible upstairs, she gave Sophy time to say what Lucy reported instantly on her entrance. ‘Dear me, mamma, here is Sophy declaring that you ought to be a charity-schoolmistress. You wont be angry with her, but it is so funny!’ ‘If you were at my charity school, Lucy,’ said Albinia, ‘the first lesson I should give you would be against telling tales.’ Lucy subsided. Albinia turned to Sophy. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘perhaps I pressed this on when you were not prepared for it, but I have always been used to think of it as a duty.’ Sophy made no answer, but her moody attitude relaxed, and Albinia took comfort in the hope that she might have been gracious if she had known how to set about it.