“What, no worse for that Jeremiad yesterday?”
“Oh, no!—why should I? As father says, it was only Quaker phraseology.”
“Then I wish,” said Thorsby, seating himself, “she would keep it exclusively for the Quakers.”
“Well, I really wish she would,” said Ann. “Poor, dear Letty was very much put out by it. She was very restless and feverish in her sleep. She slept with her eyes partly open, and glistening, which frightened me, for I got up, the night being light, several times, to look at her, and woke her because she was trying to cry out in her dreams.”
“Oh, I was dreaming all sorts of horrid impossibilities,” said Letty, laughing; “climbing over the tops of houses, and the like, and not knowing how to get down.”
“Ah, there it is!” said Thorsby. “I shall call and tell that dove-coloured Pythoness that this sort of thing won’t do.”
“No!” exclaimed all the family at once, Letty more energetically than the rest, “you must not do that. It would grieve poor Mrs. Heritage so; and there is nothing amiss. I am quite well,” said Letty.
“Grieve poor Mrs. Heritage, indeed!” replied Thorsby. “These canting, religious people, however, don’t care whom they grieve.”
“I cannot agree to that, Mr. Thorsby,” said Ann. “No nobler-hearted or more humane woman lives than Mrs. Heritage.”
“I think,” said Thorsby, “they are selfish, money-grubbing people, these Quakers; and that there’s not much to choose between ‘the Quaker sly’ and canting Methodist.”