Cousin Becky's Champions by Eleanora H. Stooke

Polly and Roger Trent always looked forward with the greatest pleasure to Sunday, for they generally spent the afternoon of that day in their father's company. If the weather was fine he took them for a long walk in the country, past the clay works which lay directly on the outskirts of Beaworthy, to the beautiful lanes and woods beyond; if, on the contrary, it was wet and they were obliged to remain in the house, he read to them or told them stories. In that way they had become familiar with Bible history before they could read themselves; and at a little later date they had listened to the entrancing history of "The Pilgrim's Progress. " They had followed Christian's journey with all its dangers and difficulties along the King's highway right onward to the celestial city; they had gloried in the fight between Christian and Apollyon in the valley of Humiliation, and had insisted every time their father had recounted it to them of a minute description of the fiend-the monster hideous to behold, clothed with scales like a fish, and wings like a dragon, and feet like a horse, and a mouth like a lion! And they had shed bitter tears over the martyrdom of Faithful, though they had never failed to brighten at the account of the chariot and horses which had borne him with the sound of trumpet through the clouds to the celestial gate into the presence of the King in His beauty.

"I hate Sundays," Edgar Marsh had told Roger on one occasion, much to the latter's surprise; "it's such a stupid day. I go to church with mother and father in the morning, I don't mind that; but in the afternoon I never know what to do with myself: father generally shuts himself up in his study and tells me not to bother him-I suppose he goes to sleep-and mother reads in the drawing-room. Don't you hate Sundays, too?"