tanza
somewhat timidly, because it sounded so much like swearing.

Nor did she neglect to teach both boys the lessons of Holy Writ.

Of a Sabbath afternoon she would read how God ordered the congregation to
stone the son of Shelomith for blasphemy; or, perhaps, how David fetched
the Ark of the Covenant from Kirjath-jearim on a new cart; and of how the
Lord "made a breach" upon Uzza for wickedly putting his hand upon the Ark
to save it when the oxen stumbled. The little boys were much impressed by
this when they discovered, after questioning, exactly what it meant to
Uzza to have "a breach" made upon him. The unwisdom of touching an Ark of
the Covenant, under any circumstances, could not have been more clearly
brought home to them. They liked also to hear of the instruments played
upon before the Lord by those that went ahead of the Ark; harps,
psalteries, and timbrels; cornets, cymbals, and instruments made of
fir-wood.

Then there was David, who danced at the head of the procession "girded
with a linen ephod," which, somehow, sounded insufficient; and indeed,
it appeared that Clytie was inclined to side wholly with Michal, David's
wife, who looked through a window and despised him when she saw him
"leaping and dancing before the Lord," uncovered save for the presumably
inadequate ephod of linen. She, Clytie, thought it not well that a man of
David's years and honour should "make himself ridiculous that way."

So it was early in this new life that the little boys came to walk as it
behooves those to walk who shall taste death. And to the littler boy,
prone to establish relations and likenesses among his mental images, the
big house itself would at times be more than itself to him. There was the
Front Room. Only the use of capital letters can indicate the manner in
which he was accustomed to regard it. Each Friday, when it was opened for
a solemn dusting, he timidly pierced its stately gloom from the threshold
of its door. It seemed to be an abode of dead joys--a place where they had
gone to reign forever in fixed and solemn festival. And while he could not
see God there, actually, neither in the horse-hair sofa nor the bleak
melodeon surmounted by tall vases of dyed grass, nor in the center-table
with its cemeterial top, nor under the empty horsehair and green-rep
chairs, set at expectant angles, nor in the cold, tall stove, ornately
set with jewels of polished nickel, and surely not in the somewhat
frivolous air-cas