– Are you not ill? – Pastor Christine asked puzzled, noticing her daughter's gloomy mood. – Vespers is coming soon, and you need your strength. Eat, my daughter.

– I'm not hungry," she replied briefly, not wanting to talk.

– Then you will not be able to eat the porridge until tomorrow morning. If you don't share the evening meal with us, you'll be hungry – Pastor was concerned about his middle daughter's behaviour: Catherine had informed him earlier that Christine had left home again.

– I don't want any porridge, Dad. I'm not feeling well," Christine lied indifferently. She did not want to go to vespers: her father's sermons on the nobility of poverty had satiated her oppressed soul. She was melancholy and hopeless and longed to be alone.

– No time! You can't miss vespers! – Kate persisted, displeased at her sister's obstinacy.

– I won't go," said Christine quietly but firmly.

– But did St Christ stop preaching when he was afflicted? – said the pastor in an instructive tone.

– Leave her alone, Dad. God sees her heart and knows what is going on in it," said Catherine to her father: she had guessed her sister's plan to avoid vespers, but she kept silent, thinking it would do Christine good to be alone and think over her "wicked" behaviour. – Just please, Chris, wash the plates. I don't have time.

Christine's response was an exasperated sigh.

A quarter of an hour later, the pastor, Catherine and Cassie put on their best dresses and hurried into the church.

Christine wiped her poor bed with tears for a long time, but when she had calmed down, she took the clay plates and, going out into the yard, began to scrub them with a pig bristle brush. Suddenly, once again, Christine felt a rush of regret for her fading life, but she could not contain her anger and grabbed one of the plates and threw it to the ground, breaking it into several large pieces. Christine returned to the house, put the clean plates on the shelf, lay down on her mattress again, and wept bitterly. When the Glowfords returned from vespers, the girl was already asleep, weary with worries and black thoughts, but Catherine woke her to listen to the passage of Scripture that Pastor Glowford read every evening.

– There's one plate missing," Catherine said, glancing at the shelf.

– It fell out of my hands and broke," Christine told her sullenly.

Kate sat down beside her on the muff, and Cassie, full of joy at her homecoming, sat down beside her, and the family began to listen to the lines of Scripture that Pastor Glowford read with feeling. The pastor's voice was hushed, then filled with power, then with gentleness, then with dire warnings of the futility of existence and the terrible consequences of sin. After reading another passage, the pastor put the book aside. The family held hands and prayed, but the hearts of two of the four were indifferent to prayer: Christine's heart was wounded by dark thoughts and feelings, and Cassie's heart was not at all attentive to prayer, and the girl was more occupied with thoughts of the morrow, for she and the local boys had conspired to rob the apple-tree of a grumpy old neighbour. As she prayed, Cassie watched with delight as a spider crawled up the wall and disappeared into one of the crevices.

– Tomorrow, after morning, I will go to see our new landlord," the parson said after the prayer was over.

– To the Count of Draymore? – Christine exclaimed, stunned by the news. – Why?

– To have a conversation with him about our church. I approached him after the service today, but he was in a hurry, but he invited me to an audience at his estate.