“Of course it depends on the heart,” continued the lady; “but charity, if it be charity——”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Frederic F. Frew interrupting her. “In Philadelphia, which in some matters is the best organised city I know——”
“I’m going down to the village,” said the parson jumping up. “Who is to come with me?” and he escaped out of the room before Frew had had an opportunity of saying a word further about Philadelphia.
“That’s the way with your uncle always,” said he, turning to Nora, almost in anger. “It certainly is the most conclusive argument I know—that of running away.”
“Mr. Granger meant it to be conclusive,” said the elder lady.
“But the pity is that it never convinces.”
“Mr. Granger probably had no desire of convincing.”
“Ah! Well, it does not signify,” said Frew. “When a man has a pulpit of his own, why should he trouble himself to argue in any place where counter arguments must be met and sustained?”
Nora was almost angry with her lover, whom she regarded as stronger and more clever than any of her uncle’s family, but tyrannical and sometimes overbearing in the use of his strength. One by one her aunt and cousin left the room, and she was left alone with him. He had taken up a newspaper as a refuge in his wrath, for in truth he did not like the manner in which his allusions to his own country were generally treated at the parsonage. There are Englishmen who think that every man differing with them is bound to bet with them on any point in dispute. “Then you decline to back your opinion,” such men say when the bet is refused. The feeling of an American is the same as to those who are unwilling to argue with him. He considers that every intelligent being is bound to argue whenever matter of argument is offered to him; nor can he understand that any subject may be too sacred for argument. Frederic F. Frew, on the present occasion, was as a dog from whose very mouth a bone had been taken. He had given one or two loud, open growls, and now sat with his newspaper, showing his teeth as far as the spirit of the thing went. And it was in this humour that Nora found herself called upon to attack him on the question of her own proposed charity. She knew well that he could bark, even at her, if things went wrong with him. “But then he never bites,” she said to herself. He had told her that she might come to her wedding in an old cloak if she pleased, but she had understood that there was nothing serious in this permission. Now, at this very moment, it was incumbent on her to open his eyes to the reality of her intention.
“Fred,” she said, “are you reading that newspaper because you are angry with me?”