Cecil laughs.
"Why should not every one have an opinion?" Molly persists. "I agree with the old song that 'Britons never shall be slaves:' therefore, why should they not assert themselves? In a hundred years hence they will have all the manners and airs of we others."
"Then they should be locked up during the intermediate stage," says Cecil, with an uncompromising nod of her blonde head. "I call them insufferable; and if Mr. Buscarlet when he comes in again makes himself agreeable to me—me!—I shall insult him,—that's all! No use arguing with me, Molly,—I shall indeed." She softens this awful threat by a merry sweet-tempered little laugh.
"Let us forget the little lawyer and talk of something we all enjoy,—to-day's sermon, for instance. You admired it, Potts, didn't you? I never saw any one so attentive in my life," says Sir Penthony.
Potts tries to look as if he had never succumbed during service to "Nature's sweet restorer;" and Molly says, apologetically:
"How could he help it? The sermon was so long."
"Yes, wasn't it?" agrees Plantagenet, eagerly. "The longest I ever heard. That man deserves to be suppressed or excommunicated; and the parishioners ought to send him a round robin to that effect. Odd, too, how much at sea one feels with a strange prayer-book. One looks for one's prayer at the top of the page, where it always used to be in one's own particular edition, and, lo! one finds it at the bottom. Whatever you may do for the future, Lady Stafford, don't lend me your prayer-book. But for the incessant trouble it caused me, between losing my place and finding it again, I don't believe I should have dropped into that gentle doze."
"Had you ever a prayer-book of your own?" asks Cecil, unkindly. "Because if so it is a pity you don't air it now and again. I have known you a great many years,—more than I care to count,—and never, never have I seen you with the vestige of one. I shall send you a pocket edition as a Christmas-box."
"Thanks awfully. I shall value it for the giver's sake. And I promise you that when next we meet—such care shall it receive—even you will be unable to discover a scratch on it."
"Plantagenet, you are a bad boy," says Cecil.