When Joe got to Skeàl-Hill, the jolly-jist had just got his breakfast, and they took Joe into the parlor to him. He laughed all over when Joe went in with the bags, and told him to set them down in a corner, and asked him if he would have some breakfast. Joe had had his porridge, but he said he didn't mind; so he told them to bring in some more coffee and eggs, and ham and toasted bread; and Joe got such a breakfast as isn't common with him, while the old gentleman was getting himself ready to go off in a carriage that was waiting at the door for him. When he came down-stairs he gave Joe another five shillings, and paid for Joe's breakfast, and for what he had eaten himself. Then he told him to put the leather bags beside the driver's feet, and into the carriage he got, and laughed, and nodded, and away he went; and then Joe heard them say he was Professor Sedgwick, a great jolly-jist. And Joe thinks it would be a famous job if father could sell all of the stones on our fell at five shillings a bagful, and a breakfast at odd times. And would it not be so, Miss Sandal? But I'm not easy in my mind about Joe changing the stones; though, as Joe says, one make of stone is about the same as another.
"Sophia, you are sleepy now."
"Yes, a little. You can finish to-morrow."
Then she laid down the simple letter, and sat very still for a little while. Her heart was busy. There is a solitary place that girdles our life into which it is good to enter at the close of every day. There we may sit still with our own soul, and commune with it; and out of its peace pass easily into the shadowy kingdom of sleep, and find a little space of rest prepared. So Charlotte sat in quiet meditation until Sophia was fathoms deep below the tide of life. Sight, speech, feeling, where were they gone? Ah! when the door is closed, and the windows darkened, who can tell what passes in the solemn temple of mortality? Are we unvisited then? Unfriended? Uncounselled?
"Behold!
The solemn spaces of the night are thronged
By bands of tender dreams, that come and go
Over the land and sea; they glide at will
Through all the dim, strange realms of men asleep,
And visit every soul."
CHAPTER VI.
THE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS.
"Still to ourselves in every place consigned.
Our own felicity we make or find."