"Pause now, Terence: consider well before you speak. Though, indeed, there should be no need for consideration when only the simple but lovely truth is required. Truth is always lovely, Terence; it is a flower of great beauty. Collect yourself, now." (This is a favorite formula with the Misses Blake.) "Don't tell a lie, Terence!" "Why should I tell a lie?" says Terence, fiercely, feeling at this moment that death, when compared with nagging, would be sweet. "Oh, Terence, what a tone! and to your good aunt Penelope, who loves you! Such a tone as that, my dear, is unchristian. Now, we don't want to know what you were _doing_ at the back gate. Why should you be afraid of us? Are we not your greatest friends? But what could you have been doing for half an hour at the back gate, Terence?" "I went up there with Michael, aunt." "I didn't ask you that, dear. I am afraid you have no confidence in us, Terence. I didn't ask you who went with you. Can't you say yes or no, Terence? Were you _long_ at the gate?" "No, aunt." "Was any one but Michael with you?" "Yes, aunt." "Was it Adams?" "No, aunt." "Can't you say anything but yes or no, Terence? Have you no command of the Queen's English, after all the money, too, your poor father wasted on your education,--and now the rector? Speak up, my dear child, and tell us everything honestly and nobly." "But there is nothing to tell, aunt, except that----" "No, collect yourself, Terence; take time, my dear. _Now_, answer me: who was with you, besides Michael?" "Timothy, aunt." The hoary-headed butler being, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion, the Misses Blake are pulled up pretty short,--so short, indeed, that they forget to ask if any one besides the respectable Timothy was at the obnoxious back gate. Perhaps had they known that the smith's son, and two or three other young men, had been there, and that all had been talking the most violent politics, their fears for Terence's morality would have increased rather than diminished. As it is, they are well pleased. "But why didn't you say that at once, my dear boy? We are so afraid of your mixing with evil companions." Terence thinks of the smith's son, and his unqualified opinion that all landlords and aristocrats and sovereigns should be "stamped out," and wonders if _he_ would come under the category of evil companions, but he wisely refrains from speech. "And," says Miss Penelope, softly, "why didn't you tell us before leaving the house where you were going? I am sure, if you had, both your aunt Priscilla and I would have been delighted _to go with you_, busy though we were."