"Why not, pray? If I, a lady, can put up with Mr. Johnson's society, why shouldn't you, one of his own sex?" "Because he is so outrageously conceited. You, as a lady, or at any rate as a woman, like conceited men." "Ah, yes; I have no doubt that I, as a woman, have all kinds of improper tastes. That's an old story." "Admit, at any rate, that our friend is conceited." "Admit it? Why, I have said so a hundred times. I have told him so." "Indeed! It has come to that, then?" "To what, pray?" "To that critical point in the friendship of a lady and gentleman, when they bring against each other all kinds of delightful charges of moral obliquity. Take care, Miss Blunt! A couple of intelligent New-Englanders, of opposite sex, young, unmarried, are pretty far gone, when they begin morally to reprobate each other. So you told Mr. Johnson that he is conceited? And I suppose you added, that he was also dreadfully satirical and skeptical? What was his rejoinder? Let me see. Did he ever tell you that you were a little bit affected?" "No: he left that for you to say, in this very ingenious manner. Thank you, sir." "He left it for me to deny, which is a great deal prettier. Do you think the manner ingenious?" "I think the matter, considering the day and hour, very profane, Mr. Locksley. Suppose you go away and let me read my Bible." "Meanwhile," I asked, "what shall I do?" "Go and read yours, if you have one." "I haven't." I was, nevertheless, compelled to retire, with the promise of a second audience in half an hour. Poor Miss Blunt owes it to her conscience to read a certain number of chapters. What a pure and upright soul she is! And what an edifying spectacle is much of our feminine piety! Women find a place for everything in their commodious little minds, just as they do in their wonderfully subdivided trunks, when they go on a journey. I have no doubt that this young lady stows away her religion in a corner, just as she does her Sunday bonnet,--and, when the proper moment comes, draws it forth, and reflects while she assumes it before the glass, and blows away the strictly imaginary dust: for what worldly impurity can penetrate through half a dozen layers of cambric and tissue-paper? Dear me, what a comfort it is to have a nice, fresh, holiday faith!--When I returned to the parlor, Miss Blunt was still sitting with her Bible in her lap. Somehow or other, I no longer felt in the mood for jesting. So I asked her soberly what she had been reading. Soberly she answered me. She inquired how I had spent my half-hour. "In thinking good Sabbath thoughts," I said. "I have been walking in the garden." And then I spoke my mind. "I have been thanking Heaven that it has led me, a poor, friendless wanderer, into so peaceful an anchorage." "Are you, then, so poor and friendless?" asked Miss Blunt, quite abruptly.