"How can you be such a fool, Aggie! I'll only say it was at our seat—and no one can possibly tell which it was at—you or me; and I'll certainly tell Dr. Splayfoot that Mr. Sedley saw it."
"And I'll tell the Doctor," said Sedley, who enjoyed the debate immensely, "that I neither saw nor said any such thing."
"I don't think, Thomas Sedley, you'd do anything so excessively wicked!" exclaimed Miss Charity, a little fiercely.
"Try me," said Tom, with an exulting little laugh.
"Every gentleman tells the truth," thrust she.
"Except where it makes mischief," parried Tom, with doubtful morality and another mischievous laugh.
"Well, I suppose I had better say nothing of Christianity. But what you do is your own affair! my duty I'll perform. I shall think it over; and I shan't be ruffled by any folly intended to annoy me." Miss Charity's thin brown cheeks had flushed to a sort of madder crimson. Excepting these flashes of irritability, I can't charge her with many human weaknesses. "I'll not say who he looked at—I've promised that; but unless I change my present opinion, Dr. Splayfoot shall hear the whole thing to-morrow. I think in a clergyman any such conduct in church is unpardonable. The effect on other people is positively ruinous. You, for instance, would not have talked about such things in the light you do, if you had not been encouraged in it, by seeing a clergyman conducting himself so."
"Mind, you've promised poor little Agnes, you'll not bring her into the business, no matter what I do," said Sedley.
"I have, certainly."
"Well, I'll stay in Cardyllian to-morrow, and I'll see Doctor Splayfoot." Sedley was buttoning his coat and pulling on his gloves, with a wicked smile on his good-humoured face. "And I'll tell him that you think the curate ogles you through a hole in the reading-desk. That you like him, and he's very much gone about you; and that you wish the affair brought to a point; and that you're going to appeal to him—Doctor Splayfoot—to use his authority either to affect that, or to stop the ogling. I will, upon my honour!"