“I'm not your cousin, either—at least not more than a nineteenth cousin. And if you begin calling me 'Hosy' I shall—I don't know what I shall do.”
“Dear me, how particular you are! Well then, au revoir—Kent.”
When Hephzy came to the study I was still seated in the rector's chair. She was brimful full of curiosity, I know, and ready to ask a dozen questions at once. But I headed off the first of the dozen.
“Hephzy,” I observed, “I have made no less than fifty solemn resolutions since we met that girl—that Little Frank of yours. You've heard me make them, haven't you.”
“Why, yes, I suppose I have. If you mean resolutions to tell her the truth about her father and put an end to the scrape we're in, I have, certain.”
“Yes; well, I've made another one now. Never, no matter what happens, will I attempt to tell her a word concerning Strickland Morley or her 'inheritance' or anything else. Every time I've tried I've made a blessed idiot of myself and now I'm through. She can stay with us forever and run us into debt to her heart's desire—I don't care. If she ever learns the truth she sha'n't learn it from me. I'm incapable of telling it. I haven't the sand of a yellow dog and I'm not going to worry about it. I'm through, do you hear—through.”
That was my newest resolution. It was a comfort to realize that THIS resolution I should probably stick to.