out she knew all about me, and she hoped
I had recovered from my fatigue the other
day.

"What fatigue?" asked I, immovably. Oh!
she had understood I was very much tired
after visiting her sisters; otherwise, of course,
I should not have felt it too much to come on
to her room. She kept hinting at me in so
many ways, that I could have asked her
gladly to slap my face and have done with it,
only I wanted to make Miss Cordelia's peace
with her for kneeling down and dirtying her
frock. I did say what I could to make things
straight; but I don't know if I did any good.
Mrs. Turner told me how suspicious and
jealous she was of everybody, and of Miss
Annabella in particular, who had been set
over her in her youth because of her beauty;
but, since it had faded. Miss Morton and Miss
Dorothy had never ceased pecking at her;
and Miss Dorothy worst of all. If it had not
been for little Miss Cordelia's love, Miss
Annabella might have wished to die; she did
often wish she had had the smallpox as a
baby. Miss Morton was stately and cold to
her, as one who had not done her duty to her
family, and was put in the corner for her bad
behaviour. Miss Dorothy was continually
talking at her, and particularly dwelling on
the fact of her being the older sister. Now
she was but two years older; and was still
so pretty and gentle looking, that I should
have forgotten it continually but for Miss
Dorothy.

The rules that were made for Miss Cordelia!
She was to eat her meals standing,
that was one thing! Another was, that she
was to drink two cups of cold water before
she had any pudding; and it just made the
child loathe cold water. Then there were
ever so many words she might not use; each
aunt had her own set of words which were
ungenteel or improper for some reason or another.
Miss Dorothy would never let her say "red;"
it was always to be pink, or crimson, or
scarlet. Miss Cordelia used at one time to
come to us, and tell us she had a "pain at her
chest" so often, that Ethelinda and I began
to be uneasy, and questioned Mrs. Turner to
know if her mother had died of consumption;
and many a good pot of currant jelly have I
given her, and only made her pain at the
chest worse; for—would you believe it?—
Miss Morton told her never to say she had
got a stomach-ache, for that it was not proper
to say so. I had heard it called by a worse
name still in my youth, and so had Ethelinda;
and we sat and wondered to ourselves
how it was that some kinds of pain were
genteel and others were not. I said that old
families, like the Mortons, generally thought
it showed good blood to have their complaints
as high in the body as they could—brain-
fevers and headaches had a better sound, and
did perhaps belong more to the aristocracy.
I thought I had got the right view in saying
this, when Ethelinda would put in that she
had often heard of Lord Toffey having the
gout and being lame, and that nonplussed me.
If there is one thing I do dislike more than
another, it is a person saying something on
the other side when I am trying to make up
my mind—how can I reason if I am to be
disturbed by another person's arguments?

But though I tell all these peculiarities of
the Miss Mortons, they were good women in
the main; even Miss Dorothy had her times
of kindness, and really did love her little
niece, though she was always laying traps to
catch her doing wrong. Miss Morton I got
to respect, if I never liked her. They would
ask us up to tea; and we would put on our
best gowns; and taking the house-key in my
pocket, we used to walk slowly through the
village, wishing that people who had been
living in our youth could have seen us now,
going by invitation to drink tea with the
family at the Hall—not in the housekeeper's
room, but with the family, mind you. But
since they began to weave in Morton,
everybody seemed too busy to notice us; so we
were fain to be content with reminding each
other how we should never have believed it
in our youth that we could have lived to this
day. After tea, Miss Morton would set us to
talk of the real old family, whom they had
never known; and you may be sure we told
of all their pomp and grandeur and stately
ways; but Ethelinda and I never spoke of
what was to ourselves like the memory of a
sad, terrible dream. So they thought of the
Squire in his coach-and-four as High Sheriff,
and Madam lying in her morning-room in
her Genoa velvet wrapping-robe, all over
peacock's eyes (it was a piece of velvet the
Squire brought back from Italy, when he had
been the grand tour), and Miss Phillis going
to a ball at a great lord's house and dancing
with a royal duke. The three ladies were
never tired of listening to the tale of the
splendour that had been going on here, while
they and their mother had been starving in
genteel poverty up in Northumberland; and
as for Miss Cordelia, she sate on a stool at
her Aunt Annabella's knee, her hand in her
aunt's, and listened, open-mouthed and
unnoticed, to all we could say.

One day, the child came crying to our
house. It was the old story; Aunt Dorothy
had been so unkind to Aunt Annabella! The
little girl said she would run away to India,
and tell her uncle the General, and seemed
in such a paroxysm of anger, and grief, and
despair, that a sudden thought came over me.
I thought I would try and teach her something
of the deep sorrow that lies awaiting all at some
part of their lives, and of the way in which
it ought to be borne, by telling her of Miss
Phillis's love and endurance for her wasteful,
handsome nephew. So from little, I got to
more, and I told her all; the child's great
eyes filling slowly with tears, which brimmed
over and came rolling down her cheeks
unnoticed as I spoke. I scarcely needed to