I wouldn't go for the world,' cried Netta.
'I am not afraid of fevers or anything else, I hope,' said Miss Gwynne contemptuously.

'You will be afraid of catching a toothache from infection next,' and herewith she left the room, followed by Mrs Prothero.
During their short absence, Mr Rowland Prothero read his sister a very proper lecture for a clergyman, on Christian charity and filial obedience, to which she listened with pouting lips and knitted brow, but with no answering speech, good or bad.

She was not silent because she had nothing to say, but because she was afraid of her brother, who was the only person of whom she was afraid.

Her feelings, however, found vent in the leaves of a rose that she was pulling to pieces and scattering ruthlessly.
The lecturer on Christian charity was a tall, gentlemanly-looking young man, whose apparently habitual gravity of deportment warmed into earnestness and animation as he talked to his sister.

He looked and spoke as if his soul were in the words he uttered, and as if it had been choice and not compulsion that led him to become a minister in Christ's family.
The entrance of Mrs Prothero and Miss Gwynne was a great relief to Netta.