She had begged the Dusautoys to make her leisure profitable, and
spent much of her time upon the schools, on her little patient in
Tibb's Alley, and in going about among the poor; she visited her old
shopkeeper friends, and drank tea with them much oftener than
gratified Mr. Kendal, talking so openly of the pleasure of seeing
them again, that Albinia sometimes thought the blood of the O'Mores
was a little chafed.
'There,' said Genevieve, completing a housewife, filled with needles
ready threaded, 'I wonder whether the omnibus is too protestant to
leave a parcel at the convent?'
'I don't think its scruples of conscience would withstand sixpence,'
said Albinia.
'You might post it for less than that,' said Sophy.
'Don't you know,' said Ulick O'More, who was playing with the little
Awk in the window, 'that the feminine mind loves expedients? It
would be less commonplace to confide the parcel to the conductor,
than merely let him receive it as guard of the mail bag and servant
of the public.'
'Exactly,' laughed Genevieve. 'Think of the moral influence of being
selected as bearer of a token of tenderness to my aunt on her fete,
instead of being treated as a mere machine, devoid of human
sympathies.'
'Sophy, where were we reading of a nation which gives the simplest
transaction the air of a little romance?' said Ulick.
'And I have heard of a nation which denudes every action of
sentiment, and leaves you the tree without the leaves,' was
Genevieve's retort.
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