"Here it is," she said with her finger on the place.
"'I belong to an oppressed sect and antiquated religion (she read), and instead of getting credit for my devotion, as is due to all other good girls, my kind friend Justice Inglewood might send me to the house of correction for it. . . . I am by nature of a frank and unreserved disposition,—a plain, true-hearted girl, who would willingly act honestly and openly by all the world, and yet fate has entangled me in such a series of nets and toils and entanglements, that I dare not speak a word for fear of consequences, not to myself but to others.'"
Sweetheart sighed again and repeated thoughtfully, "I am sorry for Die Vernon!"
"Humph," said Hugh John, with dogged masculine logic, "girls are always making up troubles, I think. I don't see what she has to 'whimp' about—everybody did just as she said at that Hall—more than I would do for any silly girl, I bet! Just you try it on, only once, Miss Sweetheart, that's all! She has all she can eat and can order it herself—lots of horses and riding—a gun—cricky, I only wish I had her chances! Think of it—just oblige me by thinking of it—secret passages to come and go by, night and day, right plumb in the wall under your nose, mysterious priests, Jesuits, Jacobites, and things. Why, it's nearly as good as Crusoe's Island, I declare."
Sweetheart looked at Hugh John with the far-away gentle compassion which always drove that matter-of-fact warrior wild.
"All girls are the same," he asserted insultingly, "they always get thinking they are going to die right off, if only their little finger aches!"
"You'll be sorry!" said Sweetheart, warningly.
"Oh, will I?" said Hugh John, truculently, "isn't what I say true, Toady Lion?"
But Toady Lion was sitting upon a buffet, in the character of Morris upon his portmanteau. He was shaking and chattering with such exaggerated terror that Maid Margaret, wrapped in a dust-sheet for a disguise and armed with the kitchen poker, could not rob him for very laughter. So neither of them paid any heed.
"You'll be sorry for speaking like that about Die Vernon," Sweetheart went on; "I've looked and I know. She was a true heroine. And she is worth a whole pack of your heroes any day."