`` Let 's pick Monday , '' said Faith . `` We mostly have a pretty FILLING dinner on Sundays , and Mondays meals never amount to much anyhow . '' `` But that 's just the point , '' exclaimed Jerry . `` We must n't take the easiest day to fast , but the hardest -- and that 's Sunday , because , as you say , we mostly have roast beef that day instead of cold ditto . It would n't be much punishment to fast from ditto . Let 's take next Sunday . It will be a good day , for father is going to exchange for the morning service with the Upper Lowbridge minister . Father will be away till evening . If Aunt Martha wonders what 's got into us , we 'll tell her right up that we 're fasting for the good of our souls , and it is in the Bible and she is not to interfere , and I guess she wo n't . '' Aunt Martha did not . She merely said in her fretful mumbling way , `` What foolishness are you young rips up to now ? '' and thought no more about it . Mr. Meredith had gone away early in the morning before any one was up . He went without his breakfast , too , but that was , of course , of common occurrence . Half of the time he forgot it and there was no one to remind him of it . Breakfast -- Aunt Martha 's breakfast -- was not a hard meal to miss . Even the hungry `` young rips '' did not feel it any great deprivation to abstain from the `` lumpy porridge and blue milk '' which had aroused the scorn of Mary Vance . But it was different at dinner time . They were furiously hungry then , and the odor of roast beef which pervaded the manse , and which was wholly delightful in spite of the fact that the roast beef was badly underdone , was almost more than they could stand . In desperation they rushed to the graveyard where they could n't smell it .
But Una could not keep her eyes XXXXX the dining room window , through which the Upper Lowbridge minister could be seen , placidly eating .
If for from in into of on till to without