Thanks in some degree to her own dawdling, she had been in a hurry the whole day, and she longed for a quiet evening: but here it seemed to her, as with the best intentions it usually is, in a large party, that, but for the laying aside of needlework, of secular books and secular music, it might as well have been any other day of the week.
Her mamma was very tired, and went to bed before tea, the gentlemen had a long talk over the fire, the boys and Beatrice laughed and talked, and she helped her grandmamma to hand about the tea, answering her questions about her mother’s health and habits, and heard a good deal that interested her, but still she could not feel as if it were Sunday. At Rocksand she used to sit for many a pleasant hour, either in the darkening summer twilight, or the bright red light of the winter fire, repeating or singing hymns, and enjoying the most delightful talks that the whole week had to offer, and now she greatly missed the conversation that would have “set this strange week to rights in her head,” as she said to herself.
She thought over it a good deal whilst Bennet was brushing her hair at night, feeling as if it had been a week-day, and as if it would be as difficult to begin a new fresh week on Monday morning, as it would a new day after sitting up a whole night. How far this was occasioned by Knight Sutton habits, and how far it was her own fault, was not what she asked herself, though she sat up for a long time musing on the change in her way of life, and scarcely able to believe that it was only last Sunday that she had been sitting with her mother over their fire at Rocksand. Enough had happened for a whole month. Her darling project was fulfilled; the airy castle of former days had become a substance, and she was inhabiting it: and was she really so very much happier? There she went into a reverie—but musing is not meditating, nor vague dreamings wholesome reflections; she went on sitting their, chiefly for want of energy to move, till the fire burnt low, the clock struck twelve, and Mrs. Frederick Langford exclaimed in a sleepy voice, “My dear, are you going to sleep there?”
CHAPTER VIII.
Breakfast was nearly over on Monday morning, when a whole party of the Sutton Leigh boys entered with the intelligence that the great pond in Knight’s Portion was quite frozen over, and that skating might begin without loss of time.
“You are coming, are you not, Bee?” said Alex, leaning over the back of her chair.
“O yes,” said she, nearly whispering “only take care. It is taboo there,”—and she made a sign with her hand towards Mrs. Langford, “and don’t frighten Aunt Mary about Fred. O it is too late, Carey’s doing the deed as fast as he can.”
Carey was asking Fred whether he had ever skated, or could skate, and Fred was giving an account of his exploits in that line at school, hoping it might prove to his mother that he might be trusted to take care of himself since he had dared the danger before. In vain: the alarmed expression had come over her face, as she asked Alexander whether his father had looked at the ice.
“No,” said Alex, “but it is perfectly safe. I tried it this morning, and it is as firm as this marble chimney-piece.”