‘It is much worse than when we used to go down into the drawing-room. Now we never see any one but Miss Charlecote, and Phœbe is getting exactly like her!’
‘What, all her sanctimonious ways? I thought so.’
‘And to make it more aggravating, Miss Fennimore is going to get religious too. She made me read all Butler’s Analogy, and wants to put me into Paley, and she is always running after Robert.’
‘Middle-aged governesses always do run after young clergymen—especially the most outré’s.’
‘And now she snaps me up if I say anything the least comprehensive or speculative, or if I laugh at the conventionalities Phœbe learns at the Holt. Yesterday I said that the progress of common sense would soon make people cease to connect dulness with mortality, or to think a serious mistiness the sole evidence of respect, and I was caught up as if it were high treason.’
‘You must not get out of bounds in your talk, Bertha, or sound unfeeling.’
‘I can’t help being original,’ said Bertha. ‘I must evolve my ideas out of my individual consciousness, and assert my independence of thought.’
Juliana laughed, not quite following her sister’s metaphysical tone, but satisfied that it was anti-Phœbe, she answered by observing, ‘An intolerable fuss they do make about that girl!’
‘And she is not a bit clever,’ continued Bertha. ‘I can do a translation in half the time she takes, and have got far beyond her in all kinds of natural philosophy!’
‘She flatters Mervyn, that’s the thing; but she will soon have enough of that. I hope he won’t get her into some dreadful scrape, that’s all!’