these particulars), his hat pulled down on to his
projecting eyebrows, and his shoes very dusty, as with a long journey
on foot--it was a hot Sunday, he remembered that--who looked at him very
strangely, and without a word pushed him aside, and went straight into
his grandmother's parlour, shutting the door behind him. He followed,
not doubting that the man must have a right to go there, but questioning
very much his right to shut him out. When he reached the door, however,
he found it bolted; and outside he had to stay all alone, in the
desolate remainder of the house, till Betty came home from church.

He could even recall, as he thought about it, how drearily the afternoon
had passed. First he had opened the street door, and stood in it. There
was nothing alive to be seen, except a sparrow picking up crumbs, and he
would not stop till he was tired of him. The Royal Oak, down the street
to the right, had not even a horseless gig or cart standing before it;
and King Charles, grinning awfully in its branches on the signboard, was
invisible from the distance at which he stood. In at the other end of
the empty street, looked the distant uplands, whose waving corn and
grass were likewise invisible, and beyond them rose one blue truncated
peak in the distance, all of them wearily at rest this weary Sabbath
day. However, there was one thing than which this was better, and that
was being at church, which, to this boy at least, was the very fifth
essence of dreariness.

He closed the door and went into the kitchen. That was nearly as bad.
The kettle was on the fire, to be sure, in anticipation of tea; but the
coals under it were black on the top, and it made only faint efforts,
after immeasurable intervals of silence, to break into a song, giving
a hum like that of a bee a mile off, and then relapsing into hopeless
inactivity. Having just had his dinner, he was not hungry enough to find
any resource in the drawer where the oatcakes lay, and, unfortunately,
the old wooden clock in the corner was going, else there would have been
some amusement in trying to torment it into demonstrations of life, as
he had often done in less desperate circumstances than the present. At
last he went up-stairs to the very room in which he now was, and sat
down upon the floor, just as he was sitting now. He had not even brought
his Pilgrim's Progress with him from his grandmother's room. But,
searching about in all holes and corners, he at length f