The young people were at home again for the summer holidays; the time was directly after dinner, and all the family, excepting John and his father, were in the sitting-room at the moment.
Hetty treated the rude boy to a severe look, and seemed more than half inclined to box his ears.
“Well, it’s quite true that my memory isn’t what it used to be,” sighed her mother, “but it’s something about the wind and the shorn lamb, and I rather think it’s in the Bible.”
“It’s Sterne, mother,” said Hetty. “‘God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.’”
“But it doesn’t suit,” laughed Araminta, “for Miss Kemper has an awful lot of hair, and if she was shorn it’s so dreadful hot to-day that anybody’d be glad to get where the wind would blow on ’em.”
“Be quiet, children!” said Mrs. Sharp. “Miss Kemper, I s’pose you’d better go at once.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE MADAME AT HER SOLICITOR’S.
“The miserable hath no other medicine