He was borne to the goal in his Saviour’s arms.”
After service was over, Clementina took a fancy—for she was always governed by fancies—to walk home with her cousins instead of driving with her parents. She therefore pursued the path across the fields with Ernest, whilst Charles and his tutor walked a little way behind.
“I was so much diverted at church,” said the young lady, in the flippant manner which she mistook for wit, “I was so much diverted to see you looking so seriously at the inscription upon your own monument. It was so funny, I could hardly help bursting out laughing, only that would have been very improper, you know.”
“The inscription made me feel anything but inclined to laugh,” observed Ernest.
“Well, I would give the world,”—had the world belonged to Clementina, she would have given it away ten times a-day,—“I would give the world to know what you were thinking when you read those fine verses upon yourself.”
“I was thinking whether it would indeed have been happier for me to have died when I was a little one, before I had known anything of the world and sin.”
“Oh, dear me! those are the dreadful, gloomy notions which you get from your horrid, methodistical tutor.”
“Clementina, I will not hear him spoken of in that manner,” said Ernest, with a decision of tone which the young lady had never heard him make use of before. She was either offended, or thought it pretty to look so, for stopping as they reached a very low stile, she called to Charles to help her over it. She wished to vex Ernest, and raise a feeling of jealousy toward his brother; but she was successful in neither of her designs, as Ernest very contentedly turned back to Mr. Ewart, and left the fair lady to pursue her walk with the companion whom she had chosen.
“I am so sorry for you, dear Charles!” said Clementina, in a voice rather more affected than usual; “it is so dreadful to be turned out of your right by a low, vulgar creature like that.”