Presently the bread and butter and milk came up for the girls, and then there was prayers--the three servants lined up in front of the bookshelves; cook wheezing heavily, tall and thin and bent, with a sloping mob cap and a thin old brown face with a forehead that was like a buttress of shiny bone and startling dark eyes that protruded so that they could be seen even when she sat looking down into her lap; and Flora the parlourmaid, short and plump and brown with an expression of perfectly serene despair, this was part of Miriam’s daily bread; and Annie the housemaid, raw pink and gold and grinning slyly at the girls--Miss Perne, sitting at the head of the table with the shabby family Bible and the book of family prayers, Miss Jenny and Miss Haddie one on each side of the fireplace, Miss Jenny’s feet hardly reaching the floor as she sat bunched on a high schoolroom chair, Miss Haddie in her cold slate-grey dress sitting back with her thin hands clasped in her lap, her grey face bent devotionally so that her chin rested on her thin chest, her eyes darting from the servants to the girls who sat in their places round the table during the time it took Miss Perne to read a short psalm. Miriam tried to cast down her eyes and close her ears. All that went on during that short interval left her equally excluded from either party. She could not sit gazing at Flora, and Miss Perne’s polite unvarying tone brought her no comfort. She sometimes thought longingly of prayers in Germany, the big quiet saal with its high windows, its great dark doors, its annexe of wooden summer-room, Fräulein’s clear, brooding undertone, the pensive calm of the German girls; the strange mass of fresh melodious sound as they all sang together. Here there seemed to be everything to encourage and nothing whatever to check the sudden murmur, the lightning swift gesture of Nancie or Trixie. The moment Miss Perne had finished her psalm they all swung round on to their knees. Miriam pressed her elbows against the cane seat of her chair and wondered what she should say to Miss Jenny at supper about the newspaper, while Miss Perne decorously prayed that they might all be fed with the sincere milk of the Word and grow thereby. After the Lord’s Prayer, a unison of breathy mutterings against closed fingers, they all rose. Then the servants filed out of the room followed by the Misses Perne. Miss Perne stopped in the doorway to shake hands with the girls on their way to bed before joining her sisters in the little sitting-room across the hall. One of the servants reappeared almost at once with a tray, distributed its contents at the fire-place end of the long table and rang the little bell in the hall on her way back to the kitchen. The Misses Perne filed back across the hall. 6 “Eh, Deborah, are ye sure?” said Miss Jenny, getting into her chair at Miss Perne’s right hand.