“Bounce?  How did you know that Bounce brought us?”—­for Bounce was Mrs. Wesley’s nag, and the Rector usually rode an old gray named Mettle, but had taken of late to a filly of his own breeding.

“I ought to remember Bounce’s shuffle,” answered Hetty.  “Nay, I should have recognised it on the road two miles back if—­if I hadn’t been—­”

She came to a full stop, in some confusion.  Nevertheless she was right; and the girls arrived downstairs to learn from Mrs. Grantham that their father had ridden off, declining her offer of supper and scoffing at her fears of highwaymen.

And the days went by.  Hetty could not help telling herself that Patty was a disappointment.  But she was saved from reflecting on it overmuch:  for Mrs. Grantham (after forty years of comfort without one) had conceived a desire to be waited on and have her hair dressed by a maid, and between Mrs. Grantham’s inability to discover precisely what she wanted done by Patty, and Patty’s unhandiness in doing it, and Mrs. Grantham’s anxiety to fill up Patty’s time, and Patty’s lack of inventiveness, the pair kept Hetty pretty constantly near her wit’s end.

Concerning her lover she attempted no more confidences.  But, alone, she pondered much on Patty’s reproof, which set her arguing out the whole case afresh.  For, absurd though its logic was, it had touched her conscience.  Was it conscience (she asked herself) or but the old habit of trembling at her father’s word, which kept her so uneasy in disobeying him?

She came to no new conclusion; for a sense of injustice gave a twist to her thinking from the start.  All his daughters held Mr. Wesley in awe:  they never dreamed, for instance, of comparing their lovers with him in respect of dignity or greatness.  They assumed that their brothers inherited some portion of that greatness, but they required none in the men to whom they were ready to give their hands; nay, perhaps unconsciously rejoiced in the lack of it, having lived with it at home and found it uncomfortable.

They were proud of it, of course, and knew that they themselves had some touch of it, if but a lunar glow.  They read the assurance in their mother’s speech, in her looks; and, moving among the Epworth folk as neighbours, yet apart, they had acquired a high pride of family which derived nothing from vulgar chatter about titled, rich and far-off relatives; but, taking ancestry for granted, found sustenance enough in the daily life at the parsonage and the letters from Westminster and Oxford.  Aware of some worth in themselves, they saw themselves pinched of food, exiled from many companions, shut out from social gatherings for want of pocket-money and decent attire, while amid all the muddle of his affairs their father could tramp for miles and pledge the last ounce of his credit to scrape a few pounds for John or Charles.  They divined his purpose:  but they felt the present injustice.