'I wonder, Milly,' said I, 'at your laughing. How _can_ you laugh?'
'You'd have me cry, would ye?' answered Milly.
'I certainly would not have you laugh,' I replied.
'I know I wish _some_ one 'ud cry for me, and I know who,' said Dudley, in
what he meant for a very engaging way, and he looked at me as if he thought
I must feel flattered by his caring to have my tears.
Instead of crying, however, I leaned back in my chair, and began quietly to
turn over the pages of Walter Scott's poems, which I and Milly were then
reading in the evenings.
The tone in which this odious young man spoke of his father, his coarse
mention of mine, and his low boasting of his irreligion, disgusted me more
than ever with him.
'They parsons be slow coaches--awful slow. I'll have a good bit to wait, I
s'pose. I should be three miles away and more by this time--drat it!' He
was eyeing the legging of the foot which he held up while he spoke, as if
calculating how far away that limb should have carried him by this time.
'Why can't folk do their Bible and prayers o' Sundays, and get it off
their stomachs? I say, Milly lass, will ye see if Governor be done wi' the
Curate? Do.
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