“They are,” says my aunt. There was a significance hidden somewhere in her voice that made me quail. “For I do observe that there is a special robustness about her appetite that would not suggest much delicacy in anything.”
I shot a look across at the wretched Prue, and saw quite enough to justify my aunt. The manner in which that young person was partaking of a woodcock at the same instant as she was leading on my lord was most astounding. Before or since I have not seen a girl eat like it.
“Oh, I am a cruel, horrid thing,” says I to my aunt. “To think of that poor child having come a journey, and being several hours in this house, and I not to have offered her a morsel till just now.”
“Barbara,” says my aunt to me, and sweetly, “in your absence from my tea-table I entreated her to partake of muffins and bohea. She had the goodness to reply that she had no partiality for sops, as she was neither a baby nor a bird.”
“La, that’s my Prue,” cries I, laughing out aloud; “she is the dearest, originalest creature. Oh, the quaint girl! sure I can see her saying that with a merry twinkling sort of look!”
“Similar to the one she is now displaying to his lordship,” says my aunt.
“Well, scarcely,” I replied, “her expression would be rather drier and more contained than that. And oh, dear aunt! I had better tell you that this madcap, Prue, takes a particular delight in surprising and disconcerting those who are insufficiently acquainted with her character.”
“She very well succeeds,” my aunt said. “Yet, my dear, I must confess that you astound me. Her letters are perfect piety; they paint her as the soul of modesty, and quite marvellously correct. I should have judged her to be a highly genteel person.”
“On the strength of her epistles, I should also,” I replied, “but then I know my wicked, roguish Prue. That reverential tone she uses in them is another of her freaks, you see, dear aunt.”
Alas! this straw was altogether too much for the poor indignant camel.