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Of your brief visit must be wholly mine; Let's leave our fathers to their grave discourse Of witch and wizard, ere we laugh outright.
 * Alice. It is a subject that the country round

Deems a most solemn one.
 * Mary. True: but to me,

'Tis not the less absurd on that account.
 * Alice. This levity 's misplac'd: your father claims

Your love and reverence
 * Mary. And I do revere him,

And love him dearly, Alice; do I not? How often have I striven to melt his sternness; And, when my heart was sick of its own cares, Lock'd up my selfish sorrows from his view, And tried, by every filial endearment, To win his smiles. E'en when his brow was darkest; I've brav'd it's terrors; hung upon his neck, And spoken of my mother: O how sweet It were methought, even to weep with him.
 * Alice. You're an enthusiast, Mary. Ah, beware,

Lest this impetuous current of your feeling Urge you, one day, against the perilous rock.