Nelly Polwhele gave a little jump when Mr. Wesley had spoken. It had come at last. She had done her best to steal away from the explanation which she feared she would have to make to him. But somehow she did not now dread facing it so greatly as she had done in the Mill. She had heard that the Reverend Mr. Wesley was severe, as well as austere. She had heard his Methodism mocked by the fashionable folk at Bath, story after story being told of his daring in rebuking the frivolities of the day. She had believed him to be an unsympathetic curmudgeon of a man, whose mission it was to banish every joy from life.
But now that she had heard his voice, so full of gentleness--now that his eyes had rested upon her in kindliness and sympathy--now that she had heard him not disdain to spend an hour telling her and her friends that romance of the backwoods, thrilling them by his telling of it, her dread of being rebuked by him for her levity was certainly a good deal less than it had been. Still she looked uneasily away from him, and they had taken a good many steps in silence together before she made an attempt to answer him. And even then she did not look at him.
“'Twas a piece of folly, I am afraid, sir,” she said in a low tone. “At least you may esteem it folly, though it did not fail to amuse the good people at the Mill,” she added in an impulse of vanity not to be resisted.
“I had no doubt that it was a domestic game,” said he. “They were all roaring with laughter. Had you heard, as I did, from without, the loud laughter of the men and above it the wild, shrill shrieks, you would, I am sure, have been as amazed as I was.”
“Bedlam--Bedlam--nothing less than Bedlam it must have seemed to you, Mr. Wesley,” she said.
“I will not contend with you as to the appropriateness of your description,” said he, smiling, still kindly.
“The truth is, sir, that I have just returned from paying my first visit to the Bath,” said she. “'Twas the greatest event in my simple life. I went to act as dresser to the Squire's young ladies, and they were so good as to allow me to see mostly all that there was to be seen, and to hear all that there was to be heard.”
“What--all? That were a perilous permission that your young ladies gave to you.”