ot a word.'
This occurred on the Sunday night. He had reached Babington on the
previous Tuesday, and was to go to Folking on next Tuesday. 'Not a
word.' The reply was made in a tone almost of anger. Julia did believe
that her cousin had been engaged to her, and that she actually had a
right to him, now that he had come back, no longer ruined.

'Some men never do,' said Aunt Polly, not wishing to encourage her
daughter's anger just at present. 'Some men are never left alone with a
girl for half a moment, but what they are talking stuff and nonsense.
Others never seem to think about it in the least. But whether it's the
one or whether it's the other, it makes no difference afterwards. He
never had much talk of that kind. I'll just say a word to him, Julia.'

The saying of the word was put off till late on Sunday evening. Sunday
was rather a trying day at Babington. If hunting, shooting, fishing,
croquet, lawn-billiards, bow and arrows, battledore and shuttle-cock,
with every other game, as games come up and go, constitute a worldly
kind of life, the Babingtons were worldly. There surely never was a
family in which any kind of work was so wholly out of the question, and
every amusement so much a matter of course. But if worldliness and
religion are terms opposed to each other, then they were not worldly.
There were always prayers for the whole household morning and evening.
There were two services on Sunday, at the first of which the males, and
at both of which the females, were expected to attend. But the great
struggle came after dinner at nine o'clock, when Aunt Polly always read
a sermon out loud to the assembled household. Aunt Polly had a certain
power of her own, and no one dared to be absent except the single
servant who was left in the kitchen to look after the fire.

The squire himself was always there, but a peculiar chair was placed for
him, supposed to be invisible to the reader, in which he slept during
the whole time, subject to correction from a neighbouring daughter in
the event of his snoring. An extra bottle of port after dinner was
another Sunday observance which added to the irritability of the
occasion,--so that the squire, when the reading and prayers were over,
would generally be very cross, and would take himself up to bed almost
without a word, and the brothers would rush away almost with indecent
haste to their smoking. As the novels had all been put away into a
cupboard, and the good books whi