"I don't know what you were thinking of, but I wish you would think about it every night!" answered Lucy, resigning herself to fate in the person of Cicely.
"Well, I shall go to bed also," said Isabella, yawning, and rising from the embroidery-frame. "I protest I am as tired as if it were Sunday evening! That John Rowe is the most tedious young man."
"You had better all go, my dears," responded Madam Passmore. "Good-night to you all. Good-night, Celia."
Celia fancied that her mother repeated the greeting to her with a tenderness in her voice which was scarcely usual with her. Was she thinking of the coming revelation?
She found Cicely helping Lucy to undress.
"Cicely," she asked, sitting down, "how do you pray?"
"Oh, that horrid Dr. Braithwaite!" cried Lucy. "I nearly fell asleep before he had half done."
"Make haste, Miss Lucy, my dear. You'd ought to have been a-bed long ago. How I pray, Mrs. Celia? Why, just like anybody else."
"Like Dr. Braithwaite? Oh, me!" said Lucy, parenthetically.
"No; not like Parson Braithwaite, my dear. Why, I couldn't even follow Parson, he said such hard words."