“Of course she wouldn't, David! Who in the world supposed she would?” demanded his wife, bringing him up roundly at this sign of wandering, and Miss Vane laughed wildly.
“And is this what your doctrine of sincerity comes to? This fulsomeness! You're very little better than one of the wicked, it seems to me! Well, I hoped that you would approve of my letting Sibyl take this thing up, but such unbounded encouragement!”
“Oh, I don't wish to flatter,” said Sewell, in the spirit of her raillery. “It will be very well for her to go round with flowers; but don't let her,” he continued seriously—“don't let her imagine it's more than an innocent amusement. It would be a sort of hideous mockery of the good we ought to do one another if there were supposed to be anything more than a kindly thoughtfulness expressed in such a thing.”
“Oh, if Sibyl doesn't feel that it's real, for the time being she won't care anything about it. She likes to lose herself in the illusion, she says.”
“Well!” said Sewell with a slight shrug, “then we must let her get what good she can out of it as an exercise of the sensibilities.”
“O my dear!” exclaimed his wife, “You don't mean anything so abominable as that! I've heard you say that the worst thing about fiction and the theatre was that they brought emotions into play that ought to be sacred to real occasions.”
“Did I say that? Well, I must have been right. I—”
Barker made a scuffling sound with his boots under the table, and rose to his feet. “I guess,” he said, “I shall have to be going.”
They had all forgotten him, and Sewell felt as if he had neglected this helpless guest. “Why, no, you mustn't go! I was in hopes we might do something to make the day pleasant to you. I intended proposing—”
“Yes,” his wife interrupted, believing that he meant to give up one of his precious afternoons to Barker, and hastening to prevent the sacrifice, “my son will show you the Public Garden and the Common, and go about the town with you.” She rose too, and young Sewell, accustomed to suffer, silently acquiesced. “If your train isn't to start very soon—”