Our family devotions are conducted in a curious fashion, but one that is eminently satisfactory to our youthful and irreligious minds. The governor goes through chapter, prayer, and benediction as hard as he can pelt, without a moment's pause, from beginning to end, and when the chapter is ended, and we have rapidly reversed ourselves, we are scarcely settled on our knees when the book, closing with a smack on Amen! shoots us all up into the perpendicular again. Every now and then the morning scamper is agreeably diversified by the unseemly conduct of the canaries, who, when papa begins to read, begin to sing, and the louder he reads, the more shrilly they shriek, until he pauses to say, in a voice of thunder, "Take those wretched birds down!" then settles to his stride again with a furious countenance, while the culprits, from an abased position on the floor, twitter derisively.
Prayers being over, breakfast is brought, and partaken of much as the Jews partook of the Passover (save that we have seats), in hot haste and the shortest possible time.
I think papa's digestion has been murdered long ago, and ours are on the high road to destruction, but, fast as we eat our meals, we heartily wish we could do it faster and get away.
This morning we are cudgelling our brains as usual to find a remark that shall be neither too fresh, nor too stale, nor too familiar, nor too dangerous, for ventilation, and every natural subject that suggests itself to our minds we reject in turn. The governor would not understand it, or he would wonder at our impudence, or—something. We are all nervously anxious to talk; it is from no obstinacy or contumaciousness that we sit tongue-tied, but somehow the stream that flows so over-bountifully among ourselves is in his presence reduced to a few scanty drops. Amberley is pouring out the coffee, limp, and meek, and drab, and fair, with putty-coloured curls, concerning which we have never ceased
