"I have made up my mind, Phoebe."
"Have you?" responded Phoebe. "What about?"
"I mean to marry Marcus Welles."
"Has he asked you?" said Phoebe, rather drily.
"Yes," was Rhoda's short answer.
Phoebe lay silent.
"Well?" said Rhoda, rather sharply.
"I think, Cousin, I had better be quiet," answered Phoebe; "for I am
afraid I can't say what you want me."
"What I want you!" echoed Rhoda, more sharply than ever. "What do I
want you to say, Mrs Prude, if you please?"
"Well, I suppose you would like me to say I was glad: and I am not: so I
can't."
"I don't suppose it signifies to us whether you are glad or sorry,"
snapped Rhoda. "But why aren't you glad?--you never thought he'd marry
you, surely?"
Phoebe said "No" with a little laugh, as she thought how very far she
was from any such expectation, and how very much farther from any wish
for it. But Rhoda was not satisfied.
"Well, then, what's the matter?" said she.
"Do you want me to say, Cousin?"
"Of course I do! Should I have asked you if I didn't?"
"I am afraid he does not love you."
Rhoda sat up on her elbow, with an ejaculation of amazement.
"If I ever heard such nonsense? What do you know about it, you poor
little white-faced thing?"
"I dare say I don't know much about it," said Phoebe, calmly; "but I
know that if a man really loves one woman with all his heart, he won't
laugh and whisper and play with the fan of another, or else he is not
worth anybody's love. And I am afraid what Mr Welles wants is just
your money and not you. I beg your pardon, Cousin Rhoda."
It was time. Rhoda was in a towering passion. What could Phoebe mean,
she demanded with terrible emphasis, by telling such lies as those? Did
she suppose that Rhoda was going to believe them? Did Phoebe know what
the Bible said about speaking ill of your neighbour? Wasn't she
completely ashamed of herself?
"And I'll tell you what, Phoebe Latrobe," concluded Rhoda, "I don't
believe it, and I won't! I'm not going to believe it,--not if you go
down on your knees and swear it! 'Tis all silly, wicked, abominable
nonsense!--and you know it!"
"Well, if you won't believe it, there's an end," said Phoebe, quietly.
"And I think, if you please, Cousin, we had better go to sleep."
"Pugh! Sleep if you can, you false-hearted crocodile!" said Rhoda,
poetically, in distant imitation of the flowers of rhetoric of her
friend Molly. "I shan't sleep to-night. Not likely!"
Yet Rhoda was asleep the first.