The youthful company were convulsed with laughter. They were all aware that Molly was intentionally talking at cross purposes with her pastor; and that while he clung to the old signification of sensible, namely, to be aware of, or sensitive to, a thing, she was using it in the new, now universally accepted, sense of sagacious. The fun, of course, was enhanced by the fact that poor Mr Edmundson was totally unacquainted with the change of meaning.
“I don’t believe she cut it off a bit!” whispered Kitty Mainwaring. “She gave a guinea to some orange-girl who was cousin to some other maid in the Queen’s laundry,—some stuff of that sort. Cut it off!—how could she? Just tell me that.”
Before the last word was well out of Kitty’s lips, Molly’s small, bright scissors were snapped within an inch of Kitty’s nose.
“Perhaps you would have the goodness to say that again, Mrs Catherine Mainwaring!” observed that young person, in decidedly menacing tones.
“Thank you, no, I don’t care to do,” replied Kitty, laughing, but shrinking back from the scissors.
“When I say I will do a thing, I will do it, Madam!” retorted Molly.
“If you can, I suppose,” said Kitty, defending herself from another threatening snap.
“Say I can’t, at your peril!”
And Molly and her scissors marched away in dudgeon.
“You are very tired, I fear, Mrs Gatty,” said Phoebe, when Gatty came up to the room they shared, for the night.