and lay lazily backward, looking down upon
Hester's busy movements out of the dusky half-shut
corners of her saucy brown eyes. Had
she been a trifle less impertinent, Hester might
have felt herself grow confused at such
unexpected and continued observation. But the
very excess of the rudeness made it seem folly
to be disturbed by it. It was so plain, that
the lady must be herself quite aware of it;
and being thus aware, she must soon apologise
and desist. Yet there was an uncomfortable
feeling upon Hester that this proud Miss Janet
Golden had taken an extraordinary dislike to
her, was going to patronise her, and persecute
her, and haunt her life, and trouble her.
So thinking, but determined to be proof
against little stings, she set forth her working
materials, her box, and her little table, her reels
of silk and her reels of thread, her scissors
and her needle-case, her bodkins and her
thimbles; and she picked and she snipped, and
she ripped out and she puckered in, with a
very cheerful face, and Miss Janet looking on.

After a good long time, Miss Janet got up
(Hester never minding), and came and stood
before the seamstress, and remained there gazing
and chafing, and gazing still and chafing more;
and Hester still taking no notice of her, she
suddenly caught up the mass of work—a
delicate fabric of tulle and lace—and, wisping it up
in her arms, sent it flying to the other end of
the room, where it sank in a soft heap, and lay
ignominiously in a corner.

"Would you sit there till Doomsday, you
contented thing! sewing and sewing, and smiling
to yourself? Would you?"

"Lady Helen's dress!" gasped Hester.

"Dress! dress! dress!" cried Miss Janet.
"Nothing but dress! Let it lie in the corner.
It will do it good. I have been wanting to tell
you something this hour, and you would not
look up. I envy you, I admire you, I wish
that we might be friends. I envy you, because
you have got something to do, because you have
not to go yawning about, the house all the morning,
falling asleep on all the couches, if lucky
enough to be able to do it, and longing to pick
out people's eyes, just for want of an occupation.
I envy you, because you have not got
everything you could wish for, because you look
so pretty in that plain, plain gown, and were
never in your life heaped up with gew-gaws as
I am. And I would like to be friends with you,
because you know how to make me ashamed of
my impudence; and you cannot believe what a
new sensation that is. And I would also like
to be friends with you, because you are a fresh
natural thing, coming into this place where we
are all of us oddities. All of us oddities, I tell
you. Sir Archie is an oddity of goodness;
Lady Helen an oddity of silliness; Miss Madge
is an oddity of oddness; and I am an oddity of
discontentedness."

Hester felt a little giddy with surprise by this
time; but, naturally, the sensation was a pleasant
one, especially coming so close upon her
former fears.

"Do stop sewing for a while, till I talk to
you," said Janet, seating herself comically on a
little low stool, and looking up at Hester. "I
want to tell you about myself. You see I am
so selfish that I can hardly take an interest in
anything but myself. I have been brought up
to it. I think about myself, pamper myself,
pity myself, hate myself; and this takes up my
time pretty much from morning until night. I
never was taught anything better that I could
do. But somehow I never felt inclined to talk
much about myself before. Now that the
impulse has come, perhaps I may talk something
off, and feel the better for it. I don't know."

"I can listen and sew," said Hester.

"No, you can't. At least you ought not to
be able to do it," said Janet. "One thing is
tiring enough at a time, at least I find it so.
Perhaps, however, nothing tires you. I should
not wonder. Well, I have got everything in
the world that can be thought of. I have a
beautiful slice of England, all my own. They
call it Amberwolds. Every mile of it is a very
garden of English order and beauty. I have a
house—it has not the grand, wild, tamed-savage
look about it that this old place has got, neither
has it that air that you feel in these old rooms,
which makes you want to keep dropping on your
knees every moment, as if you were in a church.
But it is a lightsome, brightsome, handsome,
modern hall, with every new luxury and appliance
under the sun; and too large, I believe,
for any number of people that could be counted
to live in. Well, I have plenty of money in
banks and places. And I have carriages, and
horses, and servants, and jewels; and I can put
my foot on anybody's neck when I like it. You
needn't smile; I am not going to try yours.

"It all did very well for a time. I liked to
be made a fuss about at school. I liked to be able
to make rich presents to people, and see them
looking astonished and overwhelmed. I liked
coming home and being cheered by my tenantry,
having bouquets presented to me by the village
children, and being talked about as the youthful
heiress. I enjoyed my two seasons in London,
and then, at the end of the second, I
began to get tired of being so stuffed up with
pleasure. I was like Johnny or Harry when he
has eaten too much plum pudding. And yet I
went on eating and eating. Everything sickened
me. I had done everything, seen everything,
felt everything, and there was nothing more
beyond, as far as I could discern, nothing for
the latter half of my life, which I supposed I
should have to go through like the rest of the
human kind.

"The people were all the same, till I could
have knocked their heads together, in hopes of
making a variety. Cut two men out of pasteboard,
one after one pattern, another after
another, two women the same, paint them and
varnish them, and look at them through a
multiplying glass; and there you will have society.
And neither of the patterns suited me. The
men were either too silly, or too clever for me.
The women were like myself, sick of everything,