‘Poor Priscilla!’ Dorothy did not mean to be severe on her aunt, either in regard to the letters which had not been written, or to the one letter which now had been written.  But Dorothy pitied her sister, whom she felt to be in trouble.

’Well; I don’t know about her being so poor.  Priscilla, I’ll be bound, thinks as well of herself as any of us do.’

‘She’d cut her fingers off before she’d mean to do wrong,’ said Dorothy.

’But what does that come to?  What’s the good of that?  It isn’t meaning to do right that will save us.  For aught I know, the Radicals may mean to do right.  Mr Beales means to do right perhaps.’

‘But, aunt if everybody did the best they could?’

’Tush, my dear! you are getting beyond your depth.  There are such things still, thank God! as spiritual pastors and masters.  Entrust yourself to them.  Do what they think right.’  Now if aught were known in Exeter of Miss Stanbury, this was known that if any clergyman volunteered to give to her, unasked and uninvited, counsel, either ghostly or bodily, that clergyman would be sent from her presence with a wigging which he would not soon forget.  The thing had been tried more than once, and the wigging had been complete.  There was no more attentive listener in church than Miss Stanbury; and she would, now and again, appeal to a clergyman on some knotty point.  But for the ordinary authority of spiritual pastors and masters she shewed more of abstract reverence than of practical obedience.

‘I’m sure Priscilla does the best she can,’ said Dorothy, going back to the old subject.

’Ah well yes.  What I want to say about Priscilla is this.  It is a thousand pities she is so obstinate, so pigheaded, so certain that she can manage everything for herself better than anybody else can for her.’  Miss Stanbury was striving to say something good of her niece, but found the task to be difficult and distasteful to her.

’She has managed for mamma ever so many years; and since she took it we have hardly ever been in debt,’ said Dorothy.

’She’ll do all that, I don’t doubt.  I don’t suppose she cares much for ribbons and false hair for herself.’

‘Who?  Priscilla!  The idea of Priscilla with false hair!’

’I dare say not, I dare say not.  I do not think she’d spend her mother’s money on things of that kind.’

‘Aunt Stanbury, you don’t know her.’

’Ah; very well.  Perhaps I don’t.  But, come, my dear, you are very hard upon me, and very anxious to take your sister’s part.  And what is it all about?  I’ve just written to her as civil a letter as one woman ever wrote to another.  And if I had chosen, I could have could have h m m.’  Miss Stanbury, as she hesitated for words in which to complete her sentence, revelled in the strength of the vituperation which she could have poured upon her niece’s head, had she chosen to write her last letter about Colonel Osborne in her severe strain.