“Don't strain your innocent invention, mammy! I think I'll take Mr. Lestrange! Better anger one than both of you!”
“Tease me any more with your nonsense, and I'll set your father on you! Be off with you!”
CHAPTER XX. BARBARA AND HER CRITICS.
While the two talked in the same pulverous fashion, the words came very differently from the two mouths. In the speech of the mother was more than a tone of the vulgarity of a conscious right to lay down the law, of the rudeness born of feeling above obedience and incapable of error—a rudeness identical with that of the typical vulgar duchess; the daughter's tone was playful, but dainty in its playfulness, and not without a certain unconscious dignity; her lawlessness was the freedom of the bird that cannot trespass, not that of the quadruped forcing its way. Her almost baby-like cheeks, her musical voice clear of any strain of sorrow, her quick relations with the whole world of things, her grace, more child-like than womanly, whether she stood or sat or moved about, all indicated a simple, fearless, true and trusting nature. Everybody at Mortgrange liked her; nearly everybody at Mortgrange had some different fault to find with her; all agreed that she wanted taming—except sir Wilton, who allowed the wildness, but would not hear of the taming. The hour of the morning or the night at which she would not go wandering alone about the park, or even outside it, had not yet been discovered.
“Why don't you look better after your friend, Theo?” said her father one day when Barbara's chair was empty at dinner—with his cold incisive voice, a little rasping now that the clutch of age's hand was beginning to close on his throat.
“She doesn't mind me, papa,” Theodora answered. “Do say something to her, mamma!”
“'Tis not my business to reform other people's children,” lady Ann returned.
“I find her exceedingly original!” remarked the baronet.
“In her manners, certainly,” responded his lady.