The girl had had too much of it. Her conscience was clear, and Pemberton, whom she loved and respected, had been satisfied, as Schmidt had told them. She grew red, and rising, said: "I have listened to thee; but now I say to thee, Daniel Offley, that it is none of thy business. Go home and shoe thy horses."
He was not thus to be put down. "This is only to add bad temper to thy other faults. As a Friend and for many of the Society, I would know what thee has done with thee devil wages of the lottery."
"'Thou canst not shoe my conscience'"
She looked at him a moment. The big, ruddy face struck her as comical. Her too often repressed sense of humor helped her, and crying, "Thou canst not shoe my conscience, Daniel Offley," she fled away up-stairs, her laughter ringing through the house, a little hysterical, perhaps, and first cousin to tears. The amazed preacher, left to his meditations, was shocked into taking off his beaver and saying strong words out of a far away past.
She was angry beyond the common, for Schmidt had said it was all of it unwise and meddlesome, nor was the mother better pleased than he when she came to hear of Offley's visit. "I am but half a Friend," she confessed to Schmidt, not liking altogether even the gentler inquiries of John Pemberton.
When on the next Sunday Madame de Courval was about to set out for the Swedes' church, Mrs. Swanwick said, "It is time to go to meeting, my child."
"I am not going, mother."