“I don’t recollect that he said anything about coming to-day,” she answered carelessly.
“I did not say to-day” said William provokingly.
“You did. I’m nearly certain. At all events I understood it, and really it does not the least signify.”
“Don’t be vexed—but he told me he had settled with you to come here to-day, at eleven, to play as he did yesterday,” said William.
“Ho! then I suppose I have been telling fibs as usual? I remark I never do anything right when you are here. You can’t think how pleasant it is to have some one by you always insinuating that you are about something shabby.”
“You put it in a very inexcusable light,” said William, laughing. “It may have been a vaunt of Trevor’s, for I think he’s addicted to boasting a little; or a misapprehension, or—or an indistinctness; there are fibs logical and fibs ethical, and fibs logical and ethical; but you don’t read logic, nor care for metaphysics.”
“Nor metaphysicians,” she acquiesced.
“Well,” said William, “he says he’s coming at eleven.”
“I think we are going to have prayers,” interrupted Violet, turning coldly from the window, through which William saw the little congregation of Gilroyd Hall assembling at the row of chairs by the parlour door, and Aunt Dinah’s slight figure gliding to the corner of the chimney-piece, to the right of the Very Rev. Simeon Lewis Perfect, sometime Dean of Crutch Friars, where the Bible and Prayer-book lay, and in the shadow her golden spectacles glimmered like a saintly glory round her chaste head.
So William hastened to do his office of deacon, and read the appointed chapter; and their serene devotions over, the little party of three, with the windows open, and the fragrance and twitterings of that summer-like morning entering through those leafy apertures, sat down to breakfast, and William did his best to entertain the ladies with recollections lively and awful of his college life.