ten o'clock
Family prayers gave him a keener spiritual satisfaction than the church services in which , outwardly , he cut a far more imposing figure . In a countryside peopled mainly by abominable Wesleyans and impure Baptists -LRB- Mr. Cartaret spoke and thought of Wesleyans and Baptists as if they were abominable and impure pure -RRB- he had some difficulty in procuring a congregation . The few who came to the parish church came because it was respectable and therefore profitable , or because they had got into the habit and could n't well get out of it , or because they liked it , not at all because his will and his authority compelled them . But to emerge from his study inevitably at ten o'clock , an hour when the souls of Mary and Gwendolen and Alice were most reluctant and most hostile to the thought of prayers , and by sheer worrying to round up the fugitives , whatever they happened to be doing and wherever they happened to be , this -LRB- though he said it was no pleasure to him -RRB- was more agreeable to Mr. Cartaret than he knew . The very fact that Essy was a Wesleyan and so far an unwilling conformist gave a peculiar zest to the performance . It was always the same . It started with a look through his glasses , leveled at each member of his household in turn , as if he desired to satisfy himself as to the expression of their faces while at the same time he defied them to protest .