'Ah, if there's good anywhere, we've need of it,' repeated Dolly,
who did not lightly forsake a serviceable phrase. She looked at
Silas pityingly as she went on. 'But you didn't hear the
church-bells this morning, Master Marner. I doubt you didn't know it
was Sunday. Living so lone here, you lose your count, I daresay; and
then, when your loom makes a noise, you can't hear the bells, more
partic'lar now the frost kills the sound.'
'Yes, I did; I heard 'em,' said Silas, to whom Sunday bells were
a mere accident of the day, and not part of its sacredness. There
had been no bells in Lantern Yard.
'Dear heart!' said Dolly, pausing before she spoke again. 'But what
a pity it is you should work of a Sunday, and not clean yourself- if
you didn't go to church; for if you'd a roasting bit, it might be as
you couldn't leave it, being a lone man. But there's the bakehus, if
you could make up your mind to spend a twopence on the oven now and
then,- not every week, in course- I shouldn't like to do that myself,-
you might carry your bit o' dinner there, for it's nothing but right
to have a bit o' summat hot of a Sunday, and not to make it as you
can't know your dinner from Saturday. But now, upo' Christmas-day,
this blessed Christmas as is ever coming, if you was to take your
dinner to the bakehus, and go to church, and see the holly and the
yew, and hear the anthim, and then take the sacramen', you'd be a deal
the better, and you'd know which end you stood on, and you could put
your trust i' Them as knows better nor we do, seein' you'd ha' done
what it lies on us all to do.
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