“She knows better!”
“I say, Sam, I thought you had more spirit. You’ll be sitting up pricking holes in a frill by the time the Captain comes back.”
“And Hal will be mincing along with his toes turned out like a dancing-master!” continued an affected voice.
“No such thing!” cried Hal angrily: “I’m not a fellow to be ordered about!”
The Grevilles laughed; and one of them said, “Well, then, why don’t you show it? I’d soon send her to the right-about if she tried to interfere with me!”
Miss Fosbrook could bear it no longer; and facing suddenly round, looked the speaker full in the face, and said, “I am very much obliged to you—but you should not speak quite so loud.”
The boys shrank back out of countenance; and Sam, who alone had not spoken, looked up into her face with a merry air, as if he were gratified by her spirited way of discomfiting them.
Osmond tried to recover, and muttered, “What a sell!” rather impudently; but they were now near the churchyard, and Mrs. Greville turning round, all was hushed.
Christabel felt much vexed that all this should have happened just before going into church; she felt a good deal ruffled herself, and feared that Bessie’s head was filled with nonsense, if Hal’s were not with something worse.
The church looked pretty outside, with the old weather-boarded wooden belfry rising above the tiled roof and western gable; and it was neatly kept but not pretty within, the walls all done over with pale buff wash, and the wood-work very clumsy. Sam and Susan behaved well and attentively; but Bessie fidgeted into her mamma’s place, and would stand upon a hassock. Miss Fosbrook was much afraid it was to keep in sight of the beautiful bird. Hal yawned; and Johnnie not only fidgeted unbearably himself, but made his sister Annie do the same, till Miss Fosbrook scarcely felt as if she was at church, and made up her mind to tell Johnnie that she should leave him at home with the babies unless he changed his ways. Little David went on most steadily with his Prayer-Book, and scarcely looked off it till the sermon, when he fell asleep.