‘No, I couldn’t! I’ve been burning to get away these seven years, and as Northmoor actually seems capable of taking my boys, my last tie is gone. I’m only afraid he’ll bore them with too much Sabbatarianism and temperance. He is just the cut of the model Sabbath-school teacher, only he vexes Addie’s soul by dashes of the Ritualist.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Bury, ‘the excellent Mr. Woodman is capable of improvement.’
‘But how?’ said Lady Adela. ‘Narrow ritualism without knowledge or principle is a thing to be deprecated.’
‘Is it without knowledge or principle?’
‘How should an attorney’s clerk get either?’
‘But I understand you that they are worthy people, and not obnoxious.’
‘Worthy!’ exclaimed Bertha. ‘Yes, worthy to their stiff backbones, worthy to the point of utter dulness; they haven’t got enough vulgarity even to drop their h’s or be any way entertaining. I should like them ever so much better if they ate with their knives and drank out of their saucers, but she can’t even mispronounce a French word worse than most English people.’
‘No pretension even?’
‘Oh no; if there were, one could get some fun out of it. I have heard of bearing honours meekly, but they don’t even do that, they just let them hang on them, like the stick and stock they are. If I
were Addie, it would be the deadly liveliness that would drive me away.’