He spent an hour riding over the place, seeing that the fodder had been properly stripped from the stalks in a field, looking after the ferry-boats, giving an eye to the feeding of the stock, and a sharp investigation of the stables, and returned to the house by seven o’clock. Precisely at seven o’clock every morning all the children, servants, and whatever guests there were in the house assembled in the sitting-room, where prayers were read. In his father’s time the master of the house had read these prayers, and after his death Laurence, as the head of the family, had taken up this duty; but since his marriage and removal to Mount Vernon it had fallen upon George.