"Oh Lucy, how tired, how tired I am!" said Amabel, dropping wearily into a chair. "What should I do, if I had not you to come back to?"
"You would have a better Friend than poor Lucy!" I returned. "Come, let me loosen your gown and stays, and make you comfortable. What have you been doing to tire you so?"
"It is not what I have done!" said Amabel. "I have walked out with my lady a little, but that did not tire me. It is these people and their talk that disgusts me. That rational beings can occupy themselves in such ways, and that women who call themselves ladies should listen to, and join in such talk. Nobody is safe from their tongues—not those they call their dearest friends. I wonder whether it ever occurs to my lady, that these same people talk of her in just the same way, behind her back."
"No doubt they do!" I remarked. "You know Mrs. Thorpe used to say, that a dog which would fetch a bone would carry a bone. It was a homely proverb, but I believe it is true."
"Then the everlasting trifling!" resumed Amabel. "The utter impatience of any thing like seriousness, and worse, the making free with sacred names and things. Mr. Dugdale must needs address himself to me, with some ridiculous riddle about St. Peter."
"And what did you say?" I asked.
"I told him he must excuse me, for I did not consider the sacred word as a theme for merrymaking and jesting. He had the grace to look a little abashed."
"And what said my lady?"
"Oh, she said—'You must know, Dugdale, that my daughter sets herself up for a precisian and a saint; but we shall soon cure her of that folly when we get her to town.' And then, Lucy, she had the cruelty and effrontery—yes, I will say it, if she is my father's wife—to ask him if he had heard the upshot of the affair between Mr. Cheriton and the pretty milliner's daughter. Was he really going to marry her? Or was he only amusing himself? And Mr. Dugdale answered with an oath, that Walter Cheriton must be greatly changed since he knew him, if he mixed up in any such affair as that."
"I am glad the young man had that grace at least!" said I. "But Amabel, you will not let such idle talk disturb you, will you?"