Your unlucky speech will be quoted to me a
dozen times. Never mind."
Rose went and bribed Josephine to consent.
"Come, mamma shall not know, and as for you, you shall scarcely move in
the matter; only do not oppose me very violently, and all will be well."
"Ah, Rose!" said Josephine; "it is delightful--terrible, I mean--to have
a little creature about one that reads one like this. What shall I do?
What shall I do?"
"Why, do the best you can under all the circumstances. His wound is
healed, you know; he must go back to the army; you have both suffered to
the limits of mortal endurance. Is he to go away unhappy, in any
doubt of your affection? and you to remain behind with the misery of
self-reproach added to the desolation of absence?--think."
"It is cruel. But to deceive my mother!"
"Do not say deceive our mother; that is such a shocking phrase."
Rose then reminded Josephine that their confessor had told them a wise
reticence was not the same thing as a moral deceit. She reminded her,
too, how often they had acted on his advice and always with good effect;
how many anxieties and worries they had saved their mother by reticence.
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