It was a part of this whimsicality that Mrs.
Farrinder--the reader may find it difficult to keep pace with her
variations--appeared now to have decided to utter a few of her thoughts,
so that her hostess could elicit a general response to the remark that
it would be delightful to have both the old school and the new.
"Well, perhaps you'll be disappointed in Verena," said Mrs. Tarrant,
with an air of dolorous resignation to any event, and seating herself,
with her gathered mantle, on the edge of a chair, as if she, at least,
were ready, whoever else might keep on talking.
"It isn't _me_, mother," Verena rejoined, with soft gravity, rather
detached now from Mrs. Farrinder, and sitting with her eyes fixed
thoughtfully on the ground. With deference to Mrs. Tarrant, a little
more talk was necessary, for the young lady had as yet been
insufficiently explained. Miss Birdseye felt this, but she was rather
helpless about it, and delivered herself, with her universal
familiarity, which embraced every one and everything, of a wandering,
amiable tale, in which Abraham Greenstreet kept reappearing, in which
Doctor Tarrant's miraculous cures were specified, with all the facts
wanting, and in which Verena's successes in the West were related, not
with emphasis or hyperbole, in which Miss Birdseye never indulged, but
as accepted and recognised wonders, natural in an age of new
revelations.
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