"I am glad you did not try to mislead me at the breakfast-table. I could not easily have forgiven such an act. Next to purity, I admire perfect truth in your sex."
"Mr. Winthrop, you will believe me that I never went out of our own grounds after night before alone, and I never will, if I live for a hundred years."
"Pray do not make rash promises. I only claim obedience to my wishes until you are of age. I will accept your word until that date, and shall not go in search of you along the Mill Road, or any other disreputable portion of the town again. Your mother's daughter can be trusted."
I tried to withdraw my hand, in order to escape with my tear-stained face to my own room, quite forgetting the parcel I had come down the stairway for.
"We start for New York this afternoon. Mrs. Flaxman accompanies us. She will be congenial society for you, having been a widow for nearly a score of years."
"I do not care particularly for widows. It is the poor and desolate I pity."
"Well, here is the first instalment of widows' money. I give it to you quarterly, purely from benevolent motives."
"Why so?" I asked, curiously.
"If you received it all at once Mill Road would be resplendent with crape and cheap jewelry."
"I suppose I must thank you," I said, hotly; "but the manner of the giving takes away all the grace of the gift."