Letitia ate the porridge, every grain of it.  After breakfast the serious work of the day began.  Letitia had never known anything like it.  She felt like a baby who had just come into a new world.  She was ignorant of everything that these strange relatives knew.  It made no difference that she knew some things which they did not, some advanced things.  She could, for instance, crochet, if she could not knit.  She could repeat the multiplication-table, if she did not know the doctrine of predestination; she had also all the States of the Union by heart.  But advanced knowledge is not of as much value in the past as past knowledge in the future.  She could not crochet, because there was no crochet needles; there were no States of the Union; and it seemed doubtful if there was a multiplication-table, there was so little to multiply.

So Letitia had set herself to acquiring the wisdom of her ancestors.  She learned to card, and hetchel, and spin and weave.  She learned to dye cloth, and make coarse garments, even for her great-great-great-grandfather, Captain John Hopkins.  She knitted yarn stockings, she scoured brass and pewter, and, more than all, she learned the entire catechism.  Letitia had never really known what work was.  From long before dawn until long after dark, she toiled.  She was not allowed to spend one idle moment.  She had no chance to steal out and search for the little green door, even had she not been so afraid of wild beasts and Indians.

She never went out of the house except on the Sabbath day.  Then, in fair or foul weather, they all went to meeting, ten miles through the dense forest.  Captain John Hopkins strode ahead, his gun over his shoulder.  Goodwife Hopkins rode the gray horse, and the girls rode by turns, two at a time, clinging to the pillion at her back.  Letitia was never allowed to wear her own pretty plain dress, with the velvet collar, even to meeting.

“It would create a scandal in the sanctuary,” said Goodwife Hopkins.  So Letitia went always in the queer little coarse and scanty gown, which seemed to her more like a bag than anything else; and for outside wraps she had—­of all things—­a homespun blanket pinned over her head.  Her great-great-grandmother and her great-great-aunts were all fitted out in a similar fashion.  Goodwife Hopkins, however, had a great wadded hood and a fine red cloak.

There was never any fire in the meeting-house, and the services lasted all day, with a short recess at noon, during which they went into a neighboring house, sat round the fire, warmed their half frozen feet, and ate cold corn-cakes and pan-cakes for luncheon.  There were no pews in the meeting-house, nothing but hard benches without backs.  If Letitia fidgetted, or fell asleep, the tithing-men rapped her.  Letitia would never have been allowed to stay away from meeting, had she begged to do so, but she never did.  She was afraid to stay alone in the house because of Indians.