Here the master and mistress came and
went, regardless of each other, and of all household polity; but
their meals were ready for them to the minute, when they chose to
be there to eat them; the carriage came round like one of the
puppets on the Strasburg clock; the house was quiet as a
hospital; the bells were answered--all except the door-bell
outside of calling hours--with swiftness; you could not soil your
fingers anywhere--not even if the sweep had been that same
morning; the manners of the servants--_when serving_--were
unexceptionable; but the house was scarcely more of a home than
one of the huge hotels characteristic of the age.
In the hall of it sat Mary for the space of an hour, not exactly
learning the lesson Mrs. Perkin had intended to teach her, but
learning more than one thing Mrs. Perkin was not yet capable of
learning. I can not say she was comfortable, for she was both
cold and hungry; but she was far from miserable. She had no small
gift of patience, and had taught herself to look upon the less
troubles of life as on a bad dream. There are children, though
not yet many, capable, through faith in their parents, of
learning not a little by their experience, and Mary was one of
such; from the first she received her father's lessons like one
whose business it was to learn them, and had thereby come to
learn where he had himself learned.
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