"Thank you, miss. The same to you, and very many of them!"
"Is it a cold morning?" asks Clarissa, with a little shiver. She pushes back the soft waving masses of her brown hair from her forehead, and gazes at Hester entreatingly, as though to implore her to say it is warm as a day in June.
But Hester is adamant.
"Terrible cold, miss," she says, with a sort of gusto. "That frosty it would petrify you where you stand."
"Then I won't stand," declares Clarissa, promptly sinking back once more into her downy couch. "I decline to be petrified, Hester,"—tucking the clothes well round her. "Call me again next week."
"The master is up this hour, miss," says the maid, reprovingly; "and see how beautifully your fire is burning."
"I can't see anything but the water over there. Is that ice in my bath?"
"Yes, miss. Will you let me throw a little hot water into it to melt it for you? Do, miss. I'm sure them miserable cold oblations is bitter bad for you." Perhaps she means ablutions. Nobody knows. And Clarissa, though consumed with a desire to know, dares not ask. Hester is standing a few yards from her, looking the very personfication of all pathos, and is plainly an-angered of the frozen bath.
"Well, then, Hester, yes; a little—a very little—hot water, just for once," says Clarissa, unable to resist the woman's pleading, and her own fear of the "bitter chill" that awaits her on the other side of the blankets. "My courage has flown; indeed, I don't see how I can get up at all,"—willfully, snuggling down even more closely into the warm sheets.
"Oh, now get up, miss, do," implores her maid. "It is getting real late, and the master has been up asking for you twice already."