ing Sabbath, and take her a
fine walk to eat cakes and drink ale at Weston fair, which, though
it was professed to be kept on the Monday, yet, to the disgrace of
the village, always began on the Sunday evening.[8] Rebecca, who
would on no account have wasted the Monday, which was a working day,
in idleness and pleasure, thought she had a very good right to enjoy
herself at the fair on the Sunday evening, as well as to take her
children. Hester earnestly begged to be left at home, and her
mother, in a rage, went without her. A wet walk, and more ale than
she was used to drink, gave Rebecca a dangerous fever. During this
illness Hester, who would not follow her to a scene of dissolute
mirth, attended her night and day, and denied herself necessaries
that her sick mother might have comforts; and though she secretly
prayed to God that this sickness might change her mother's heart,
yet she never once reproached her, or put her in mind that it was
caught by indulging in a sinful pleasure.

[8] This practice is too common. Those fairs which profess to be
kept on Monday, commonly begin on the Sunday. It is much to be
wished that magistrates would put a stop to it, as Mr. Simpson did
at Weston, at the request of Mrs. Jones. There is another great
evil worth the notice of justices. In many villages, during the
fair, ale is sold at private houses, which have no license, to the
great injury of sobriety and good morals.

Another Sunday night her father told Hester he thought she had now
been at school long enough for him to have a little good of her
learning, so he desired she would stay at home and read to him.
Hester cheerfully ran and fetched her Testament. But John fell a
laughing, calling her a fool, and said, it would be time enough to
read the Testament to him when he was going to die, but at present
he must have something merry. So saying, he gave her a songbook
which he had picked up at the Bell. Hester, having cast her eyes
over it, refused to read it, saying, she did not dare offend God by
reading what would hurt her own soul. John called her a canting
hypocrite, and said he would put the Testament into the fire, for
that there was not a more merry girl than she was before she became
religious. Her mother, for once, took her part; not because she
thought her daughter in the right, but because she was glad of any
pretense to show her husband was in the wrong; though she herself
would have abused Hester for the sa