‘Perhaps you will admit me here,’ he said, smiling, for he was pleased with himself. ‘Turn me out when I am in the way.’
‘Oh! Edmund, how delightful! See, we shall put your high desk under the window, and your chair in your own corner. This will be the pleasantest place in the house, with you and your books! Dear Winifred! she did me one of her greatest services when she made me keep this room habitable!’
‘And I think Sophy will not object to give up her present little room for my dressing-room. Shall you, my dear?’ said he, anxious to judge of her temper by her reply.
‘I don’t care,’ she said; ‘I don’t want any difference made to please me; I think that weak.’
‘Sophy!’ began Albinia, indignantly, but Mr. Kendal stopped her, and made her come down, to consider of the proposal in the study.
That study, once an oppressive rival to the bride, now not merely vanquished, but absolutely abandoned by its former captive!
‘Don’t say anything to her,’ said Mr. Kendal, as they went downstairs. ‘Of course her spirits are one consideration, but were it otherwise, I could not see you give up your private room.’
‘It is very kind in you, but indeed I can spare mine better than you can,’ said Albinia. ‘I am afraid you will never feel out of the whirl.’
‘Yours would be a loss to us all,’ said Mr. Kendal. ‘The more inmates there are in a house, the more needful to have them well assorted.’
‘Just so; and that makes me afraid—’