'Lizzie,'
said she, 'will you forgive me for that very unkind thing I said to
you?'
Elizabeth did not at first recollect what it was, and when she did,
she only said, 'Nonsense, Helen, I never consider what people say
when they are cross, any more than when they are drunk.'
Anne was very much diverted by the idea of Elizabeth's experience of
what drunken people said, or of drunkenness and ill-temper being
allied, and her merriment restored the spirits of her cousins, and
took off from what Elizabeth called the 'awfulness of a grand
pardoning scene.' Helen was then sent to summon the children to
their lessons, which were happily always supposed to begin later on a
Monday than on any other day of the week.
The study door was open, and as she passed by, her father called her
into the room. 'Helen,' said he, 'Elizabeth tells me that you acted
the part of a sensible and obedient girl the other evening, and I am
much pleased to hear it.'
Helen stood for a few moments, too much overcome with delight and
surprise to be able to speak. Mr. Woodbourne went on writing, and
she bounded upstairs with something more of a hop, skip, and jump,
than those steps had known from her foot since she had been an
inhabitant of the nursery herself, thinking 'What would he say if he
knew that I only refused to go, out of a spirit of opposition?' yet
feeling the truth of what Anne had said, that her father's praise,
rarely given, and only when well earned, was worth all the Stauntons'
admiration fifty times over.
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