“Mr. Woodward,” replied Alice, “don't mistake me; I am inaccessible to flattery.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” said he, “because I know that for that reason you are not and will not be insensible to truth.”
“Unless when it borrows the garb of flattery, and thus causes itself to be suspected.”
“In that case,” said Woodward, “nothing but good sense, Miss Goodwin, can draw the distinction between them—and now I know that you are possessed of that.”
“I hope so, sir,” she replied, “and that I will ever continue to observe that distinction. Mamma, I want more thread,” she said: “where can I get it?”
“Up stairs, dear, in my work-box.”
She then bowed slightly to Woodward and went up to find her thread, but in fact from a wish to put an end to a conversation that she felt to be exceedingly disagreeable. At this moment old Goodwin came in.
“You will excuse me, I trust, Mr. Woodward,” said he, “I was down in the dining-room receiving rents for———.” He paused, for, on reflection, he felt that this was a disagreeable topic to allude to; the fact being that he acted as his daughter's agent, and I had been on that and the preceding day receiving her rents. “Martha,” said he, “what! about luncheon? You'll take luncheon with us, Mr. Woodward?”
Woodward bowed, and Mrs. Goodwin was about to leave the room, when he said:
“Perhaps, Mrs. Goodwin, you'd be good enough to remain for a few minutes.” Mrs. Goodwin sat down, and he proceeded: “I trust that my arrival home will, under Providence, be the means of reconciling and reuniting two families who never should have been at variance. Not but that I admit, my dear friends,—if you will allow me to call you so,—that the melancholy event of my poor uncle's death, and the unexpected disposition of so large a property, were calculated to try the patience of worldly-minded people—and who is not so in a more or less I degree?”