ay speak to your father, may not I, Jemima?"
No! for some reason or fancy which she could not define, and
could not be persuaded out of, she wished to keep their mutual
understanding a secret. She had a natural desire to avoid the
congratulations she expected from her family. She dreaded her
father's consideration of the whole affair as a satisfactory disposal
of his daughter to a worthy man, who, being his partner, would not
require any abstraction of capital from the concern, and Richard's
more noisy delight at his sister's having "hooked" so good a match.
It was only her simple-hearted mother that she longed to tell. She
knew that her mother's congratulations would not jar upon her, though
they might not sound the full organ-peal of her love. But all that
her mother knew passed onwards to her father; so for the present,
at any rate, she determined to realise her secret position alone.
Somehow, the sympathy of all others that she most longed for was
Ruth's; but the first communication of such an event was due to
her parents. She imposed very strict regulations on Mr Farquhar's
behaviour; and quarrelled and differed from him more than ever, but
with a secret joyful understanding with him in her heart, even while
they disagreed with each other--for similarity of opinion is not
always--I think not often--needed for fulness and perfection of love.
After Ruth's "detection," as Mr Bradshaw used to call it, he said he
could never trust another governess again; so Mary and Elizabeth had
been sent to school the following Christmas, and their place in the
family was but poorly supplied by the return of Mr Richard Bradshaw,
who had left London, and been received as a partner.
CHAPTER XXIX
Sally Takes Her Money Out of the Bank
The conversation narrated in the last chapter as taking place between
Mr Farquhar and Jemima, occurred about a year after Ruth's dismissal
from her situation. That year, full of small events, and change
of place to the Bradshaws, had been monotonous and long in its
course to the other household. There had been no want of peace and
tranquillity; there had, perhaps, been more of them than in the
preceding years, when, though unacknowledged by any, all must have
occasionally felt the oppression of the falsehood--and a slight
glancing dread must have flashed across their most prosperous state,
lest, somehow or another, the mystery should be disclosed. But now,
as the shepherd-boy in John Buny
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