This change was a source of much pleasure to Annie. For although she
found the service more wearisome than good Mr Cowie's, lasting as it
did about three quarters of an hour longer and the sermon was not
invariably of a kind in which she could feel much interest, yet,
occasionally, when Mr Turnbull was in his better moods, and testified
of that which he had himself seen and known, the honest heart of the
maiden recognized the truth, and listened absorbed. The young Bruces,
for their parts, would gladly have gone to sleep, which would perhaps
have been the most profitable use to which they could put the time; but
they were kept upright and in a measure awake, by the constant
application, "spikewise," of the paternal elbow, and the judicious
administration, on the part of the mother, of the unfailing peppermint
lozenges, to which in the process of ages a certain sabbatical
character has attached itself. To Annie, however, no such ministration
extended, for it would have been downright waste, seeing she could keep
awake without it.
One bright frosty morning, the sermon happening to have no relation to
the light around or within them, but only to the covenant made with
Abraham--such a legal document constituting the only reliable
protection against the character, inclinations, and duties of the
Almighty, whose uncovenanted mercies are of a very doubtful
nature--Annie, neither able to enter into the subject, nor to keep from
shivering with the cold, tried to amuse herself with gazing at one
brilliant sun-streak on the wall, which she had discovered to be
gradually shortening itself, and retreating towards the window by which
it had entered.
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