d disputing, and a Bible-chopping, as usual. Ha, ha! But 'twon't hold
much longer, old Wyat says, now that Uncle Austin's dead; there's nout to
be made o' praying and that work no longer, and it don't pay of itself.'

'O fie! For shame, you sinner!' laughed Milly. 'He wasn't in a church these
five years, he says, and then only to meet a young lady. Now, isn't he a
sinner, Maud--isn't he?'

Dudley, grinning, looked with a languishing slyness at me, biting the edge
of his wide-awake, which he held over his breast.

Dudley Ruthyn probably thought there was a manly and desperate sort of
fascination in the impiety he professed.

'I wonder, Milly,' said I, 'at your laughing. How _can_ you laugh?'

'You'd have me cry, would ye?' answered Milly.

'I certainly would not have you laugh,' I replied.

'I know I wish _some_ one 'ud cry for me, and I know who,' said Dudley, in
what he meant for a very engaging way, and he looked at me as if he thought
I must feel flattered by his caring to have my tears.

Instead of crying, however, I leaned back in my chair, and began quietly to
turn over the pages of Walter Scott's poems, which I and Milly were then
reading in the evenings.

The tone in which this odious young man spoke of his father, his coarse
mention of mine, and his low boasting of his irreligion, disgusted me more
than ever with him.

'They parsons be slow coaches--awful slow. I'll have a good bit to wait, I
s'pose. I should be three miles away and more by this time--drat it!' He
was eyeing the legging of the foot which he held up while he spoke, as if
calculating how far away that limb should have carried him by this time.
'Why can't folk do their Bible and prayers o' Sundays, and get it off
their stomachs? I say, Milly lass, will ye see if Governor be done wi' the
Curate? Do. I'm a losing the whole day along o' him.'

Milly jumped up, accustomed to obey her brother, and as she passed me,
whispered, with a wink--

'_Money_.'

And away she went. Dudley whistled a tune, and swung his foot like a
pendulum, as he followed her with his side-glance.

'I say, it is a hard case, Miss, a lad o' spirit should be kept so tight. I
haven't a shilling but what comes through his fingers; an' drat the tizzy
he'll gi' me till he knows the reason why.'

'Perhaps,' I said, 'my uncle thinks you should earn some for yourself.'

'I'd like to know how a fella's to earn money now-a-days. You wouldn't have
a gentleman to keep a shop