I Forbid the Banns! — page 178: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

168 “VT FORBID THE BANNSI” ‘‘For God’s sake, Bertha, find your hat.’’ The imploration might strike some people as being ridicu- lously earnest. We do not ask our wives and sisters for God’s sake to complete their toilets when we are going to drive them to a railway station. But to Berthait did not seem at all ridicu- lous that he should so implore of her to. put on her hat. She was in the hall in a moment and running upstairs. “‘Ah, what a pity it 1s that you must go, madam,’”’ said the housekeeper. ‘‘ Why should you go back to the smoke and the noise of London town?”’ ‘We must go back at once, Mrs. Barwell,’’ said the girl. “But I shall take back with me the recollection of the songs of your birds—oh, such songs!’’ ‘“‘Ah, these are only the riff-raff of birds that you heard to-day,’’ said Mrs. Barwell. ‘‘They are only the blackbirds and thethrostles. They are with us always; but last night, if you had been at this window, as I was, and had heard the first nightingale that has come to us, you would not talk about such fowl as them outside.’ ‘‘Was it lovelier than the tenor Mrs. Barwell?’’ ‘Everybody to their own tastes in the matter of birds, my young lady—meaning madam—ma’am, but nobody that has an ear to hear would mention the nightingale in the same breath with the others. Whatapity it isthat you can’t tarry to hear the nightingale, madam.’’ ‘‘Oh, no, no!’ cried the girl in a way that frightened the housekeeper. ‘‘I could not hear it—I dare not. Oh, why is it that to be a woman is to be weak—miserably weak? I could not hear the nightingale. And yet, ah, I should like to hear it above anything in the world.’’ She threw herself into a chair and buried her face in her hands. Mrs. Barwell looked at the lovely young creature with an expression which was at first one of amazement, but which soon softened into one of matronly superiority, An CONNIELNOOKS (E(0)