"How am I to know of whom you speak? You appear to have acted in a very forward way with some one your father disapproves of."
"I assure you, I never did anything of the kind. It is not at all my manner. I thought you considered it wrong to make unfounded accusations."
"Grace, what a most un-Christian temper you still continue to display at times! Your cheeks are quite red, and your eyes excited, in a way very sad to witness. The trouble I have taken is beyond all knowledge. If you do not value it, your father does."
"Aunty Patch, may I see exactly what my daddy says to you? I will show you mine if you will show me yours."
"My dear, you seem to forget continually. You treat me as if I were of your own age, and had never been through the very first alarm which comes for our salvation. It has not come to you, or you could not be so frivolous and worldly as you are. When first it rang, even for myself——"
"How many times does it ring, Aunt? I mean for every individual sinner, as you always call us."
"My dear, it rings three times, as has been proved by the most inspired of all modern preachers, the Rev. Wm. Romaine, while amplifying the blessed words of the pious Joseph Alleine. He begins his discourse upon it thus——"
"Aunty, you have told me that so many times that I could go up into his desk and do it. It is all so very good and superior; but there are times when it will not come. You, or at any rate I, for certain, may go down on our knees and pray, and nothing ever comes of it. I have been at it every night and morning, really quite letting go whatever I was thinking of—and what is there to come of it, except this letter? And it doesn't sound as if my father ever wrote a word of it."
"Grace, what do you mean, if you please?"
"I mean what I do not please. I mean that I have been here at least five months, as long as any fifty, and have put up with the miserablest things—now, never mind about my English, if you please, it is quite good enough for such a place as this—and have done my very best to put up with you, who are enough to take fifty people's lives away, with perpetual propriety—and have hoped and hoped, and prayed and prayed, till my knees are not fit to be looked at—and now, after all, what has come of it? That I am to marry a boy with a red cord down his legs, and a crystal in his whip, and a pretty face that seems to come from his mamma's watch-pocket, and a very nice and gentle way of looking at a lady, as if he were quite capable, if he had the opportunity, of saying 'bo' to any goose on the other side of the river!"