to deny? You won't put me off that way. A lady who
can only unbend so far as to the English Constitution by way of
recreation, must--'

'But it is not by way of recreation.'

'Come, I know my respected cousin too well to imagine she would have
imposed such a task. That won't do, Phoebe.'

'I never said she had, but Miss Fennimore desired me.'

'I shall appeal. There's no act of tyranny a woman in authority will not
commit. But this is a free country, Phoebe, as maybe you have gathered
from your author, and unless her trammels have reached to your soul--'
and he laid his hand on the book to take it away.

'Perhaps they have,' said Phoebe, smiling, but holding it fast, 'for I
shall be much more comfortable in doing as I was told.'

'Indeed!' said Owen, pretending to scrutinize her as if she were
something extraordinary (really as an excuse for a good gaze upon her
pure complexion and limpid eyes, so steady, childlike, and unabashed,
free from all such consciousness as would make them shrink from the
playful look). 'Indeed! Now, in my experience the comfort would be in
the _not_ doing as you were told.'

'Ah! but you know I have no spirit.'

'I wish to heaven other people had none!' cried Owen, suddenly changing
his tone, and sitting down opposite to Phoebe, his elbow on the table,
and speaking earnestly. 'I would give the world that my sister were like
you. Did you ever hear of anything so preposterous as this Irish
business?'

'She cannot think of it, when Miss Charlecote has told her of all the
objections,' said Phoebe.

'She will go the more,' returned Owen. 'I say to you, Phoebe, what I
would say to no one else. Lucilla's treatment of Honora Charlecote is
abominable--vexes me more than I can say. They say some nations have no
words for gratitude. One would think she had come of them.'

Phoebe looked much shocked, but said, 'Perhaps Miss Charlecote's kindness
has seemed to her like a matter of course, not as it does to us, who have
no claim at all.'

'We had no claim,' said Owen; 'the connection is nothing, absolutely
nothing. I believe, poor dear, the attraction was that she had once been
attached to my father, and he was too popular a preacher to _keep_ well
as a lover. Well, there were we, a couple of orphans, a nuisance to all
our kith and kin--nobody with a bit of mercy for us but that queer old
coon, Kit Charteris, when she takes us home, treats us like her own
children, feels for us