"So you went into Coole, after all," she says. "Oh, Terence!"
"I couldn't help it," says Terence, wrathfully. "I wasn't going to let the rabbit go for the sake of a mere whim."
"A mere whim!" Words fail me to convey Miss Priscilla's indignation. "Are you destitute of heart, boy, that you talk thus lightly of a family insult? Oh! shame, shame!"
"I'm very sorry if I have made you unhappy," says Terence, who is really a very good boy and fond. "I didn't mean it, indeed."
But Miss Priscilla appears quite broken-hearted.
"To dream of bringing a rabbit of Coole into this house!" she says, with quite a catch in her voice that brings Miss Penelope into prominent play.
"If, when you came to the stile that leads into Moyne," she says, "you had said to yourself, 'My good aunt, who loves me so dearly, would not wish me to enter this forbidden land,' you would, I hope, have paused, and come back here. But you did not. You went recklessly on, and trod upon ground where your foot is unwelcome."
"Dear Aunt Penelope, do not talk like that," says Monica, entreatingly, slipping her arm around her.
"And this to his poor old aunts who love him so fondly!" says Miss Penelope, in so dismal a voice that the two Misses Blake break into sobs.
"It wouldn't seem so bad if he hadn't equivocated about it," says Miss Priscilla, presently. "But he purposely led us to believe that he had not set his foot on that detested land."