Randolph, with grim
deliberation, "for half an hour; she confesses it herself--TALKING WITH
A YOUNG MAN!"
"Yes, but the others had gone for the buggy. And, in the name of Heaven,
what would you have her do--hide herself in the grain?" said the major,
desperately. "Besides," he added, with a recklessness he afterwards
regretted, "that mechanical chap they've got there is really intelligent
and worth talking to."
"I have no doubt SHE thought so," said Mrs. Randolph, with a mirthless
smile. "In fact, I have observed that the American freedom generally
means doing what you WANT to do. Indeed, I wonder she didn't bring him
with her! Only I beg, major, that you will not again, in the presence
of my daughter,--and I may even say, of my son,--talk lightly of the
solitary meetings of young ladies with mechanics, even though their
faces were smutty, and their clothes covered with oil."
The major here muttered something about there being less danger in a
young lady listening to the intelligence of a coarsely-dressed laborer
than to the compliments of a rose-scented fop, but Mrs.
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