"I can dress in ten minutes if I want to."
"I will leave you now." She hesitated a moment at the door, but she could not bring herself to speak of her engagement. She saw that Charlotte was in one of her "no-matter-every-thing-right" moods, and knew she would take the important news without the proper surprise and enthusiasm. In fact, she perceived that Harry's visit occupied her whole mind; for, as she stood a moment or two irresolute as to her own desires, Charlotte talked eagerly of her brother.
"Well, I hope if Harry is of so much importance in your eyes, you will dress decently to meet him. The rector is coming to dinner also."
"I shall wear my blue gown. If I imitate you, I cannot be much out of the way. Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! I hope Harry will have a pleasant visit. We must do our best, Sophia, to make him happy."
"O Charlotte, if you have nothing to talk about but Harry, Harry, Harry, I am going! I am very fond of Harry, but I don't pretend to be blind to Harry's faults. Remember how many disagreeable hours he has given us lately. And I must say that I think he was very ungrateful about the hundred and eighty pounds I gave him. He never wrote me a line of thanks."
"You did not give it to Harry, you loaned it to me. Be just Sophia. I have paid you fifteen pounds of it back already, and I shall not buy a single new dress until it is all returned. You will not lose a shilling, Sophia."
"How Quixotic you can be! However, it is no use exciting ourselves to-night. One likes to keep the peace at Yule-tide, and so I will bow down to your idol as much as I can conscientiously."
Charlotte made no answer. She had risen hastily, and with rather unnecessary vigor was rattling the ewer and basin, and plashing out the water. Sophia came back into the room, arranged the glass at the proper angle to give her a last comprehensive review of herself; and this being quite satisfactory, she went away with a smiling complacency, and a subdued excitement of manner, which in some peculiar way revealed to Charlotte the real position of affairs between her sister and Julius Sandal.
"She might have told me." She dashed the water over her face at the implied complaint; and it was easy to see, from the impatient way in which she subsequently unbound her hair, and pulled the comb through it, and from the irritability of all her movements, that she felt the omission to be a slight, not only indicating something not quite pleasant in the past, but prefiguring also she knew not what disagreeable feelings for the future.