Page:The Semi-attached Couple.djvu/41

 hands, "There, you ungracious little thing. Look and repent."

"Ay, repent indeed," said Helen, throwing it from her; "and unless I were as cold and as hard as those stones, how can I but repent? She will not understand me; she will not help me; and how can she unless I had courage to tell her all? Oh! but the disgrace would, as she says, be too great; and then papa and mamma, and the day fixed, and so near. Oh! what shall I do!"

The dressing-bell rang, so it was clear that the first thing to be done was to dress for dinner; and happy for us is it that these ordinary domestic habits of life watch over its imaginative distresses with the sagacity and decision of sheep dogs, and bark and worry them till they fall into the proper path of the flock.