"Aunt Emily leaves Tunbridge Wells" was mentioned too, sounding less
unpleasant than "Aunt Emily comes back." But the climax was reached
when somebody stated bluntly without fear of contradiction:
"To-morrow's Sunday."
For Sunday had no particular colour. Monday was black, and Saturday
was gold, but Sunday never had been painted anything. Though a buffer-
day between a vanished week and a week of labour coming, it was of
uncertain character. Queer, grave people came back to lunch. There
were collects and a vague uneasiness about the heathen being unfed and
naked. There was a collection, too--pennies emerged from stained
leather purses and dropped clicking into a polished box with a slit in
the top. Greenland's icy mountains also helped to put a chill into the
sunshine. A pause came. Time went slower than usual--God rested, they
remembered, on the seventh day--yet nothing happened much, and with
their Sunday clothes they put on a sort of dreadful carefulness that
made play seem stiff, unnatural, and out of place.
Daddy, too, before the day was over, invariably looked worried, the
servants bored, Mother drowsy, and Aunt Emily "like a clergyman's
wife.
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