"Take my heart."
"Present me with a part—but for good."
"Fie! But you have a right to say it."
"I mean no unkindness; but is not the heart you allude to an alarmingly searching one?"
"Selfish it is, for I have been forgetting Crossjay. If we are going to be generous, is not Crossjay to be forgiven? If it were only that the boy's father is away fighting for his country, endangering his life day by day, and for a stipend not enough to support his family, we are bound to think of the boy! Poor dear silly lad! with his 'I say, Miss Middleton, why wouldn't (some one) see my father when he came here to call on him, and had to walk back ten miles in the rain?'—I could almost fancy that did me mischief. . . But we have a splendid morning after yesterday's rain. And we will be generous. Own, Laetitia, that it is possible to gild the most glorious day of creation."
"Doubtless the spirit may do it and make its hues permanent," said
Laetitia.
"You to me, I to you, he to us. Well, then, if he does, it shall be one of my heavenly days. Which is for the probation of experience. We are not yet at sunset."
"Have you seen Mr. Whitford this morning?"
"He passed me."
"Do not imagine him ever ill-tempered."