“You needn’t look a whole volume of sermons at me, Miss Susan,” said she. “Pray, what would you have had me do under the circumstances?”
“I would have had you speak the truth.”
“I should like to know if I didn’t speak the truth! As nearly as I can understand, your advice would have been, when Miss Forester asked me if I had correct answers, to have said, ‘No.’ Very singular advice, I must say, from a person possessing your remarkable virtues! No, my dear young woman: that would have been a lie; and I’m altogether too conscientious to be guilty of such a thing!”
“How can you talk so, Florence? You know it was very wrong. In the first place——”
Florence put her hands over her ears.
“Bless me!” she exclaimed. “We are actually going to have a sermon! You must be used to preaching, for you begin in regular ministerial fashion:—‘In the first place!’ Excuse me: I don’t care about hearing the other seventy-seven heads of the discourse.” And she rose and left the room abruptly.
She left the door open behind her, so that the girls heard her say to several of her companions who were sitting in the hall, round a favourite study-table,—
“I am going to ask Mr. Worcester to have my room changed. The fact is, it’s altogether too much for one sinner to monopolize the benefits arising from such saintly room-mates. Besides, saints are dreadfully tedious, I find. I did suppose there would be some advantages from having such room-mates,—for instance, that I could have the looking-glass all to myself; but, to my surprise, I find that the saints make as much use of it as I do. The only thing to be gained is a very large number of moral lectures. I left Saint Susan holding forth as I came out; and she was quite horrified and disgusted at my wickedness in not staying to hear her discourse to the end. If any of you feel the need of a sermon, walk into No. 40. Seats free; and she hasn’t got more than half through yet.”
The girls laughed,—some of them heartily.
“I declare, it is shameful!” exclaimed Carrie, angrily. Susan said nothing. Her lip quivered as she bent over her slate; but she controlled herself, and at last, declaring that she had solved the difficult problem, she proceeded to explain the proper process to her fellow-students.