Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/148

 friend the Honourable Prudence Canticle. She is very fond of hymns. She thinks a lot about her soul, and is a wonderfully good young creature. But my dearest Prue, is that how Pilgrim walked upon his progress? Pray correct it, for it is indeed most immodest and unwomanlike. In four strides you have swaggered across the room."

"All right, dear Bab," says he, with an impudence that I itched to box his ears for. "But I so detest you niminy piminy fine ladies, with your affectations and your foibles. Therefore, I remove my manners from you as far as possible. I spurn your mincing footsteps, dear. Besides, I am on the narrow and the thorny track, and the bigger strides I take the sooner I shall have walked across it."

"You must contrive to modulate your voice in a different key to that," says I, his mentor. "You must become far less roguish and impertinent; you must manipulate your skirts with a deal more of dexterity; and, above all, I would have you imitate my tone. The one you are using now is bourgeois, provincial, a very barbarism, and an insult to ears accustomed to refinement."

"Lard, Bab," says the wicked dog, "give me a chaney arange, or a dish of tay, for I'm martal tharsty."

"Prue," says I, "let me proceed to read you the first lesson."