"You wicked child, you! To think of picking a flower _Sunday_! What do you expect will become of you when you die? What do you think the neighbors will think? Sinful child! There"--slamming her down on a cricket in the sitting-room--"sit down, and see if you can learn what the chief end of man is, afore meeting time. Flowers of a _Sunday_! or flowers any day, for the matter of that, I never could see the sense of 'em. Even the Bible says, 'they toil not, neither do they spin.' Gracious goodness--Sewsan Quip, Mrs. Snow's kerriage has just started for meetin'. Get your things, all of you. Sewsan, see to that peddler's child; mind that she don't take no flowers to the Lord's temple; John Quip, you shan't wear them gloves; they cost twenty-five cents at the finding-store; and if you think that I bought 'em for you to drive in, you are mistaken; now put 'em in your pocket till you get into the meetin'-us porch; that will save 'em a sight; them leather reins will wear 'em all threadbare in less than no time. Mercy on us, the string is off my bunnet. Sewsan, that's your doing. Run and bring me a pin off the third shelf in the buttery, under the yellow quart bowl. I picked it up and put it there this morning. Make haste, now. John Quip, stop cracking your whip that way on the holy Sabbath day. What do you suppose your dead grandpa would think, if he should hear it?"
The wagon was brought, and its living freight stowed carefully away in the remote corners. The oil-cloth covering was buttoned carefully down on all sides, as it had been during the winter; Mrs. Quip said it was hot, but maybe it would crack the oil-cloth to roll it up for the breeze to play through. Susan, Mary, and Fanny, therefore, took a vapor bath, on the back seat. Mrs. Quip, seated at John's side, excluded, with her big black bonnet, any stray breeze which might have found entrance that way, to the refreshing of the gasping passengers. Dobbin moved on; he had been up that hot, dusty hill, many a Sunday before, and understood perfectly well how to keep his strength in reserve for the usual accession to his load on the village green, in the shape of the Falstaffian Aunt Hepsibah, Miss Butts, the milliner, and Deacon Tufts, who were duly piled in on the gasping occupants behind. Mrs. Quip being also on the alert to fill up any stray chinks in the "waggin" with "them children who stopped to rest in the road, when they oughter go straight to meetin'."