“Not they!” replied Carne, who was vexed, however; “they are taking things easily, according to the custom of the nation. But two good things we have done, friend Charron; we have learned their proceedings, and we have spoiled their feasting.”
“But not at all; they are all coming back to enjoy it all the more!” cried the Frenchman. “Oh that I were an Englishman, to get such a dinner, and to be so loyal to it!”
Few things can be worse for a very young woman than to want to be led by somebody, and yet find nobody fit to do it. Or at any rate, through superior quickness and the knowledge of it, to regard old friends and relatives of experience as very slow coaches, and prigs or prudes, who cannot enter into quick young feelings, but deal in old saws which grate upon them.
Not to moralise about it--for if young ladies hate anything, it is such moralising--Miss Dolly Darling was now in that uncomfortable frame of mind when advice is most needed, yet most certain to be spurned. She looked upon her loving and sensible sister as one who was fated to be an old maid, and was meant perhaps by nature for that condition, which appeared to herself the most abject in the world. And even without that conclusion about Faith she would have been loth to seek counsel from her, having always resented most unduly what she called her “superior air of wisdom.” Dolly knew that she was quicker of wit than her sister--as shallow waters run more rapidly--and she fancied that she possessed a world of lively feelings into which the slower intellect could not enter. For instance, their elder brother Frank had just published a volume of poems, very noble in their way, and glowing with ardour for freedom, democracy, and the like, as well as exhibiting fine perception of sound, and great boldness in matters beyond sounding, yet largely ungifted with knowledge of nature, whether human or superior.
“Better stick to his law-books,” the Admiral had said, after singing out some of the rhyme of it to the tune of “Billy Benbow”; “never sit on the wool-sack by spewing oakum this way.”
Faith had tried, as a matter of duty, to peruse this book to its cover; but she found it beyond even her good-will, and mild sympathy with everything, to do so. There was not the touch of nature in it which makes humble people feel, and tickles even the very highest with desire to enter into it. So Faith declared that it must be very clever, and no doubt very beautiful, but she herself was so stupid that she could not make out very clearly what it was all about.