“You little goose! it means tar and feathers! Well, don’t let us talk any more about it. I am done with words.”
“Edith got into the crowd to-night,” Mrs. Yorke said, “and they were impudent. She took it very quietly then, I think, but after she got home she was quite hysterical. I thought the child would sob herself to death.”
“She had no business to be out,” her uncle exclaimed. “Neither had you and Betsey. How do you know what they may do?”
“You are right, dear,” she said soothingly. “In future, we will stay in the house, and you will stay with us.”
CHAPTER XXIV
“CELUI-LA FAIT LE CRIME A QUI LE CRIME SERT.”
Mr. Yorke was at the Seaton House when the Western mail-coach came in Saturday morning, but Father Rasle was not a passenger. The mail brought a letter from him to Edith, however, and her uncle took it home to her immediately. She read aloud to the family his thanks for their invitation, and his reasons for declining it. He would drive over in his own buggy, he wrote, and would probably reach Seaton before ten o’clock in the forenoon. Edith had better come to see him in the morning, as he would then be more at leisure.
“Why, he must be here now!” Edith exclaimed, and ran up-stairs to prepare herself for the visit.
If Mrs. Yorke and her daughters
felt any sense of relief on learning that they had escaped the danger which would have threatened them had the priest been their guest, they did not express that feeling. They were quite ready, in spite of the danger, to repeat the invitation. Mr. Yorke alone sincerely regretted Father Rasle’s decision. Even Edith, who knew nothing of the action of the town-meeting, perceived that the priest’s place was with his own people.