‘That would be beginning at the wrong end, Cilla; you are not my charge.’
‘You are my clergyman,’ she said, pettishly.
‘You are not my parishioner,’ he answered.
‘Pish!’ she said; ‘when you know I want you to tell me.’
‘Why, you say you have made the engagement.’
‘So what I said when she fretted me past endurance must bind me!’
Be it observed that, like all who only knew Hiltonbury
through Lucilla, Mr. Prendergast attributed any blemishes which he might detect in her to the injudicious training of an old maid; so he sympathized. ‘Ah! ladies of a certain age never get on with young ones! But I thought it was all settled before with Miss Charteris.’
‘I never quite said I would go, only we got ready for the sake of the fun of talking of it, and now Rashe has grown horridly eager about it. She did not care at first—only to please me.’
‘Then wouldn’t it be using her ill to disappoint her now? You couldn’t do it, Cilla. Why, you have given your word, and she is quite old enough for anything. Wouldn’t Miss Charlecote see it so?’