'What! he sent you up?'
'Ay;' and as Robina sat down on a low stool, he threw himself on the floor, with his head on her lap, delivering himself of a howling yawn.
'Why did he send you up?' as she stroked his hair back from his temples.
'Oh, it has been an intolerable bother! All the samples of writing-paper have somehow been and gone and got into the wrong drawers, and Mr. Underwood has been in no end of a state of mind—quite ferocious; and Lamb and I have been sorting and struggling to get 'em right, till at last I didn't know fancy pink from widow's deepest affliction; and Felix, by way of the most cutting thing he could do to me, orders me up-stairs!'
'I am so sorry! It must have been Lamb's doing.'
'No: he's much too sober-sided. It was mine, I'm sure, one day when I was hating it all a little worse than usual.'
'Hating it all! O Lance! I thought you got on so well!'
'A nice sort of getting on! I know when it was. There were those two Miss Bayneses—out at Upham—came in with some fad about note-paper, made a monstrous fuss; but they are very pretty—something like that girl at Stoneborough. So I wrote up to Scott's—took no end of trouble. Scott had to cut it on purpose—wouldn't do less than a ream—and after all, when it came down, my young ladies just take one quire of it, turn everything over again, never say one word of thanks, but stand chattering away to an ape of a cousin that came in with them. I was in such a wax, that I believe I jumbled up the paper when they'd gone, and tumbled it all over again; and it has never got the better of it, though I always meant to set it to rights.'
'Well, I think it served you right, if you only did it because they were pretty!'
'It wasn't altogether that; but I knew they would say nothing was to be had when Mr. Underwood wasn't there. That's the way of it; one's just a bit of a machine for getting things!'