romances.

'You wont tell papa!' cried Gilbert, raising himself, in far more
real and present terror than he had previously shown.

'How did you get it? Whose is it?'

'It is my own. I bought it at Richardson's. It is very funny. But
you wont tell papa? I never was told not; indeed I was not.'

'Now, Gilbert dear, will you tell me a few things? I do only wish
what is good for you. Why don't you wish that papa should hear of
this book?'

Gilbert writhed himself.

'You know he would not like it?'

'Then why did you take to reading it?'

'Oh!' cried the boy, 'if you only did know how stupid and how
miserable it has been! More than half myself gone, and Sophy always
glum, and Lucy always plaguing, and Aunt Maria always being a
torment, you would not wonder at one's doing anything to forget it!'

'Yes, but why do what you knew to be wrong?'

'Nobody told me not.'

'Disobedience to the spirit, then, if not to the letter. It was not