Frank!” The words sang in my ears all night, and I slept in fairyland.

Chapter Seven.

Doubt.

CONTENTS

 “Thro’ light and shadow thou dost range, Sudden glances sweet and strange, Delicious spites and darling angers, And airy forms of flitting change.” 

I had not yet had an opportunity of being introduced to Min’s mother.

’Pon my word, you exclaim, this looks very serious!

I beg to differ from you. We had been brought together legitimately enough, down at the church-decoration-gathering in the school-room: we had been regularly introduced by no less a clerical authority than little Miss Pimpernell, the vicar’s sister: we had then and there associated under the safest chaperonage—good heavens! would not Miss Spight’s jealous green eyes, that were certain to pick out the tiniest blot in her fellow man or woman, and Lady Dasher’s stately, albeit melancholy presence, satisfy you? Thus, the “convenances,” that horrid Anglo-French pseudonym, of the still more horrible bugbear “society,” had no cause to consider themselves neglected and find an excuse for taking umbrage. From this point, our acquaintanceship naturally and gradually ripened. We got intimate: it was our fate, I suppose—what more or less would you have expected?

Besides, although, mind you, I do not consider myself in any way bound to allay your curiosity and satisfy your compunctious scruples, you should remember that all of us young parishioners of Saint Canon’s—Horner, Baby Blake, Lizzie Dangler and the rest—had known each other almost from the distant days of childhood; and, consequently, were in the habit of tutoyer-ing one another, using our respective “given” names in familiar conversation. The habit may be a bad one, it is true, but you cannot prevent it sometimes. There is no practice so capable of imitation as that of calling one another by the Christian name. It is just like that of the monkeys all cleaning their teeth along the banks of the Amazon with pieces of stick, because they saw Professor Agassiz setting them an example one fine morning, when engaged on his toilet in company with a tooth-brush. You can’t help yourself: you must bow to the custom and follow suit.

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