This was true,
so far as it went; but Olive could not tell Verena everything--could not
tell her that she hated that dreadful pair at Cambridge. As we know, she
had forbidden herself this emotion as regards individuals; and she
flattered herself that she considered the Tarrants as a type, a
deplorable one, a class that, with the public at large, discredited the
cause of the new truths. She had talked them over with Miss Birdseye
(Olive was always looking after her now and giving her things--the good
lady appeared at this period in wonderful caps and shawls--for she felt
she couldn't thank her enough), and even Doctor Prance's fellow-lodger,
whose animosity to flourishing evils lived in the happiest (though the
most illicit) union with the mania for finding excuses, even Miss
Birdseye was obliged to confess that if you came to examine his record,
poor Selah didn't amount to so very much. How little he amounted to
Olive perceived after she had made Verena talk, as the girl did
immensely, about her father and mother--quite unconscious, meanwhile, of
the conclusions she suggested to Miss Chancellor. Tarrant was a moralist
without moral sense--that was very clear to Olive as she listened to the
history of his daughter's childhood and youth, which Verena related with
an extraordinary artless vividness.
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