Perhaps it must be so. The destination of the Thrush
must be now preeminently interesting. A day or two
might shew the difference. _She_ only was to blame.
Yet she thought it would not have been so at Mansfield.
No, in her uncle's house there would have been a
consideration of times and seasons, a regulation of subject,
a propriety, an attention towards everybody which there
was not here.
The only interruption which thoughts like these received
for nearly half an hour was from a sudden burst of her
father's, not at all calculated to compose them. At a more
than ordinary pitch of thumping and hallooing in the passage,
he exclaimed, "Devil take those young dogs! How they are
singing out! Ay, Sam's voice louder than all the rest!
That boy is fit for a boatswain. Holla, you there!
Sam, stop your confounded pipe, or I shall be after you."
This threat was so palpably disregarded, that though
within five minutes afterwards the three boys all burst
into the room together and sat down, Fanny could not
consider it as a proof of anything more than their being
for the time thoroughly fagged, which their hot faces
and panting breaths seemed to prove, especially as they
were still kicking each other's shins, and hallooing
out at sudden starts immediately under their father's eye.
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