“Not exactly that, but talking of fifty other things that interest their time of life and tempers. Have they not songs, drawings, flowers, landscapes, and books, with all their thousand incidents, to discuss? Just remember what that writer who calls himself 'Author of Waverley'—what he alone has given us of people to talk over just as if we knew them.”
“Brother Peter, I have no patience with you. You enumerate one by one all the ingredients, and you disparage the total. You tell of the flour, and the plums, and the suet, and the candied lemon, but you cry out against the pudding! Don't you see that the very themes you leave for them all conduce to what you ignore, and that your music and painting and romance-reading only lead to love-making? Don't you see this, or are you in reality—I didn't want to say it, but you have made me—are you an old fool?”
“I hope not, Dinah; but I'm not so sure you don't think me one.”
“It's nothing to the purpose whether I do or not,” said she; “the question is, have you asked this young man to come back with us to Ireland?”
“I have, and he is coming.”
“I could have sworn to it,” said she, with a sudden energy; “and if there was anything more stupid, you 'd have done it also.” And with this speech, more remarkable for its vigor than its politeness, she turned away and left him.
Ere I close the chapter and the subject, let me glance, and only glance, at the room where Conyers is now standing beside Josephine. She is drawing, not very attentively or carefully, perhaps, and he is bending over her and relating, as it seems, something that has occurred to him, and has come to the end with the words, “And though I was to have gone this evening, it turns out that now I am to stay and accompany you to Ireland.”
“Don't sigh so painfully over it, however,” said she, gravely; “for when you come to mention how distressing it is, I 'm sure they 'll let you off.”
“Fifine,” said he, reproachfully, “is this fair, is this generous?”
“I don't know whether it be unfair, I don't want it to be generous,” said she, boldly.