My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming; I love not less, though less the show appear: That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
The pleasant books, that silently among Our household treasures take familiar places, And are to us as if a living tongue Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces!
She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.