"What! one of the poppies and bluebells that Will Honeycomb admired? She'll beat you, Prissy, out and out. I would sicken and bear her company."
"I wonder to hear you, sir. I can tell you, Granny would not coddle me so. Granny is always preaching of hardening weakness."
"Ah, the old mother is no milksop!"
There, was she not right? Had she not full hints of the history of the Vicarage and madam its mistress, the mother of these two little girls; and of the parish priest her husband, their father—the younger brother of the tolerably educated squire yonder, with his Larks' Hall; and of Granny, who kept house there still for her elder son, where she had once reigned queen paramount in the hearty days of her homely goodman. It was a scroll fairly unfolded, and perfectly legible to the experienced woman.
"Uncle Rowland," prefaced the soft voice, more quietly, "do you really think the gay world of the town so much more vicious than the sober world of the country?"
"Why, no, my dear," answered the manly voice, now graver, and with a little sadness in its ring, "ignorance is not innocence, and depravity is vastly more general than any mode. Nevertheless, there are customs of which I would greatly prefer Prissy and Fiddy to remain unaware, like their mother before them."
"But Granny lived in the great world, and there is not one of us like Granny."
"The risk is too great, child; the fire is wondrous strong, though the pure gold be sometimes refined in the process—as your father would preach."
"And, sir, this Mistress Lumley, or Lady Betty, as they called her downstairs, is as virtuous as she is clever."
"You may depend upon that, Miss, or you had not come to Bath to see her play. They term the poor soul Lady Betty because she has turned on her heel from the worthless London sparks, and taught them to keep their distance."