“A very temporary one,” my aunt says. “’Tis my duty to advise my brother of this matter; and he will hold it his to acquaint Captain Grantley and other interested persons.”
“That is as it may be,” says I, calmly, “for I think that on reflection, my dearest aunt, you will do nothing of the kind.”
“So and indeed!” cries my aunt, in an awful voice. “Barbara, this is gross—this is impertinence.”
“It may be both, dear aunt,” says I, “or it may be neither, but its truth, I know, and that I’ll swear to.”
“Defend my virtue!” cried my aunt; “this is beyond all suffering.”
The iceberg strove to freeze me with her eye. And perhaps she would have done it, too, only that a bright idea took me at the moment and armed me with new brazenness. My masters of the other sex, if you would bend us to your will, do it with audacity. No palterings, no if-you-pleases, no apostrophes. Big, bullying Coercion does our business. Swear by your beards and the god of thunder, and none of us shall say you nay, for there is not a petticoat among us can resist you. This method, then, I clapped upon my aunt, and now look you to the sequel.
“The matter is just this, dear aunt,” says I. “What about prim old Dame Propriety? I would have you think of her, dear aunt. There is not a female of us all can afford to disregard her.”
I pinned such a steady eye upon my aunt that shortly her high look drooped and was replaced by an ugly one of baffled rage. How fortunate I had ingenuity enough to hold that cat’s paw! ’Twould have scratched me else, and badly.
“What will the world say, auntie dear?” I asked. “A word of this in town and the particular family to which you have the condescension to belong will be derided by the world. My Lady Clapper will live upon it for a fortnight. Your very dear friend, Mrs. Saywell, will dispense it regularly with her new bohea and dish it up hotter than her muffins, and feed every insatiable man in Mayfair on it. Nor will they find it indigestible as her buttered crumpets either. A word, dear aunt, and the whole bench of Bishops will preach a sermon on it, and send all your presentation stoles and slippers back greatly discoloured with their tears. We shall be afflicted with the exultation of our enemies and, worse a hundred times, the commiseration of our friends. Will you not reflect, dear auntie?”
For the dear lady to reflect was quite unnecessary. Instinct was sufficient to decide her. She was as likely to rouse good Dame Propriety, or to make her family the source of common conversation, as she was to sit in a pew with a hassock in it, or to listen to a Low Church clergyman.