“But,” remonstrated William, “but, I assure you, I, without a feeling of fitness in fact, I could not think of it.”
“Into the Church, Sir.” Aunt Dinah rose up, and as it were, mounted guard over him, as she sternly spoke these words.
William looked rather puzzled, and very much annoyed.
“Into—the—Church!” she repeated, with a terrible deliberation.
“My dear aunt,” William began.
“Yes, the Church. Listen to me. I have reason to know you’ll be a bishop. Now mind, William, I’ll hear no nonsense on this subject. Henbane! Is that what you mutter?”
“Well, speak out. What of Henbane? Suppose I have been favoured with a communication; suppose I have tried to learn by that most beautiful and innocent communion, something of the expediency of the course I proposed, and have succeeded. What then?”
William did not answer the challenge, and after a brief pause she continued—
“Come, come, my dear William, you know your poor old aunt loves you; you have been her first, and very nearly her only object, and you won’t begin to vex her now, and after all to break her heart about nothing.”
“But I assure you,” William began.