“I don’t know, really,” said Amphillis, feeling rather bewildered by Agatha’s reckless rattle, and remembering the injunction not to make a friend of her. “I suppose I have come here to do my duty; but I know not yet what it shall be.”
“I detest doing my duty!” said Agatha, energetically.
“That’s a pity, isn’t it?” was the reply.
Agatha laughed.
“Come, you can give a quip-word,” said she. “Clarice was just a lump of wood, that you could batter nought into,—might as well sit next a post. Marabel has some brains, but they’re so far in, there’s no fetching ’em forth. I declare I shall do somewhat one o’ these days that shall shock all the neighbourhood, only to make a diversion.”
“I don’t think I would,” responded Amphillis. “You might find it ran the wrong way.”
“You’ll do,” said Agatha, laughing. “You are not jolly, but you’re next best to it.”
“Whose is that empty place on the form?” asked Amphillis, looking across.
“Oh, that’s Master Norman’s—Sir Godfrey’s squire—he’s away with him.”
And Agatha, without any apparent reason, became suddenly silent.