With the first thrill of pleasure at finding that patriotism had drawn together those whom the churches had long held aloof came to all the gushing impulse to cement the newly-formed relationship by confiding to each other secrets heretofore jealously guarded.

Nor should be forgotten the "narrative stimulus" every one feels on gaining new listeners to old stories.
It was so graciously condescending in Mrs.Euphrosyne Pursifer to communicate to Mrs.Elizabeth Baker some few particulars in which her aristocratic associates of St.Marks had grieved her by not rising to her standard of womanly dignity and Christian duty, that Mrs.Baker in turn was only too happy to reciprocate with a similar confidence in regard to her intimate friends of Wesley Chapel.
It was this sudden lapsing of all restraint that made the waves of gossip surge like sweeping billows.
And the flotsam that appeared most frequently of late on their crests, and that was tossed most relentlessly hither and thither, was Rachel Bond's and Harry Glen's conduct and relations to each other.
The Consolidated Lint-scraping and Bandage-making Union was holding a regular session, and gossip was at spring-tide.
"It is certainly queer," said Mrs.Tufis, one of her regulation smiles illuminating her very artificial countenance; "it is singular to the last degree that we don't have Miss Rachel Bond among us.

She is such a LOVELY girl.

I am very, very fond of her, and her heart is thoroughly in unison with our objects.

It would seem impossible for her to keep away." All this with the acrid sub-flavor of irony and insincerity with which an insincere woman can not help tainting even her most sincere words.
"Yes," said Mrs.Tabitha Grimes, with a premeditated acerbity apparent even in the threading of her needle, into the eye of which she thrust the thread as if piercing the flesh of an enemy with a barb; "yes;" she pulled the thread through with a motion as if she enjoyed its rasping against the steel.