“Yes; I like to shake hands with him; he has a trustworthy face.”
“So much for the mothers of Dunellen, Tessa; how about the fathers? Would the girls like to have Miss Jewett for a father, too?”
“Oh, the fathers have the bread-winning to do. If the mothers do not understand, we can not expect the fathers to understand. There was a girl at school who had had a hard home experience; she told me that she never repeated the second word of the Lord’s prayer; that she said instead: Our Lord, who art in heaven?”
“Oh, deary me! How dreadful!” cried Dinah, moving nearer the arm-chair and dropping her head on her father’s shoulder. “Didn’t she ever learn to say it?”
“Not while we were at school.”
“Tessa, you can talk,” said her mother.
“Yes,” said Tessa, humbly, “I can talk.”
“She was a very wicked girl,” continued Mrs. Wadsworth. “I don’t see how she dared; I should think that she would have been afraid of dying in her sleep as a judgment sent upon her.”
“Perhaps she did not repeat the prayer as a charm,” answered Tessa, in her clearest tones.
Dinah lifted her head to laugh.