Page:A Colonial Wooing.djvu/67

 and gentle swain who lingered long after their prosy parents considered time enough had elapsed wherein to exchange common-places.

"Is thee not keeping Joseph too long?" once called out an impatient father, as his daughter showed no disposition to bring her conversation to a close. "I hope thee will never think that of me," she whispered to Joseph, with a winsome smile, and then the demure little Quakeress hurried to her father's carriage and gravely discussed with her mother the sermon they had heard, as though she were the head of a family instead of the youngest child.

While youth remained there was always enough worldliness and sweet, harmless deception to hold back the austerities of the elders. No positive wickedness, but mischief and an assertion of the natural man that no follower of George Fox ever escaped, although in later years every one strove to forget it and cautioned their children against "the wiles of the adversary." Strange delusion, that of such intense mortification