England -- Fiction; Love stories; Male friendship -- Fiction; Quakers -- Fiction; Social classes -- Fiction
"Where I was at school, Lord Hampstead," Marion answered, "we were
kept in strict leading-strings. Fancy, father, what Miss Watson would
have said if we had used any word in a sense not used in a
dictionary."
"Miss Watson was a sensible woman, my dear, and understood well,
and performed faithfully, the duties which she had undertaken. I do
not know that as much can be said of all those who keep fashionable
seminaries for young ladies at the West End."
"Miss Watson had a red face, and a big cap, and spectacles;--had she
not?" said Hampstead, appealing to Marion Fay.
"Miss Watson," said Mrs. Roden, "whom I remember to have seen once
when Marion was at school with her, was a very little woman, with
bright eyes, who wore her own hair, and always looked as though she
had come out of a bandbox."
"She was absolutely true to her ideas of life, as a Quaker should
be," said Mr. Fay, "and I only hope that Marion will follow her
example. As to language, it is, I think, convenient that to a certain
extent our mode of speech should consort with our mode of living. You
would not expect to hear from a pulpit the phrases which belong to a
racecourse, nor would the expressions which are decorous, perhaps, in
aristocratic drawing-rooms befit the humble parlours of clerks and
artisans."
"I never will say that anything is awful again," said Lord Hampstead,
as he gave his arm to Mrs. Roden, and took her in to dinner.
"I hope he will not be angry with father," whispered Marion Fay to
George Roden, as they walked across the hall together.
"Not in the least. Nothing of that kind could anger him. If your
father were to cringe or to flatter him then he would be disgusted."
"Father would never do that," said Marion, with confidence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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