"Yes, I have read the letter," she declared with emphasis.
"Really, mother, you may read all my letters if you wish to. But I think I might be allowed to see them first. I am twenty-four, old enough, therefore, to get my correspondence uncensored."
"You are my daughter, Janet, and if you were forty-four instead of twenty-four, it would still be my duty to guard you against evil influences, and to look after your spiritual welfare."
"I don't see how your spiritual guardianship affects my legal right to my own letters." She added scornfully: "Am I to consider Emily as one of my moral guardians, too?"
Janet was not easily aroused. When she was, she spoke in low cold tones that irritated her listeners more than the sharpest abuse.
"I read the first sentence accidentally—" began Emily indignantly. Mrs. Barr interrupted her.
"You know quite well that I have made it a rule not to interfere with your correspondence," she said, acridly. "But I consider that what Emily saw by chance justified me in making this case an exception, especially as you have been so diligent lately in wasting the Lord's time."
This was a pet phrase of Mrs. Barr's.
"I don't understand the charge," said Janet, like a prisoner in the dock.
"I refer to your recent godless behavior."