“And then?”
“Cecil may have some faint idea.”
“Of what you underwent?”
“She wanted to begin on me as if I were a wild savage heathen, you know! I believe she nearly had a fit when I declined a prayer-meeting, and as to my walking out with Bob on Sunday evening!”
“Did she make you learn Watts’s hymns?”
“No! but she did what was much worse to poor Bob. She told him she had spent the time in prayer and humiliation, and the poor fellow very nearly cried.”
“Ah, those mothers have such an advantage over their sons,” said Lady Tyrrell.
“I determined I would never go near her again after that,” said Mrs. Duncombe. “Bob goes; he is really fond of her; but I knew we should keep the peace better apart. I let her have the children now and then, when it is convenient, and oddly enough they like it; but I shall soon have to stop that, for I won’t have them think me a reprobate; and she has thought me ten times worse ever since I found out that I had brains and could use them.”
“Quite true,” said Camilla; “there’s no peacemaker like absence.”
“The only pity is that Swanslea is no further off,” returned Bessie.