"That's right, dear Lady Harriet! you can't think what a pleasure it is to me to welcome you at my own fireside, into my humble home."
"Humble! now, Clare, that's a little bit of nonsense, begging your pardon. I don't call this pretty little drawing-room a bit of a 'humble home.' It's as full of comforts, and of pretty things too, as any room of its size can be."
"Ah! how small you must feel it! even I had to reconcile myself to it at first."
"Well! perhaps your schoolroom was larger, but remember how bare it was, how empty of anything but deal tables, and forms, and mats. Oh, indeed, Clare, I quite agree with mamma, who always says you have done very well for yourself; and Mr. Gibson too! What an agreeable, well-informed man!"
"Yes, he is," said his wife, slowly, as if she did not like to relinquish her rôle of a victim to circumstances quite immediately. "He is very agreeable, very; only we see so little of him; and of course he comes home tired and hungry, and not inclined to talk to his own family, and apt to go to sleep."
"Come, come!" said Lady Harriet, "I'm going to have my turn now. We've had the complaint of a doctor's wife, now hear the moans of a peer's daughter. Our house is so overrun with visitors! and literally to-day I have come to you for a little solitude."
"Solitude!" exclaimed Mrs. Gibson. "Would you rather be alone?" slightly aggrieved.
"No, you dear silly woman; my solitude requires a listener, to whom I may say, 'How sweet is solitude!' But I am tired of the responsibility of entertaining. Papa is so open-hearted, he asks every friend he meets with to come and pay us a visit. Mamma is really a great invalid, but she does not choose to give up her reputation for good health, having always considered illness a want of self-control. So she gets wearied and worried by a crowd of people who are all of them open-mouthed for amusement of some kind; just like a brood of fledglings in a nest; so I have to be parent-bird, and pop morsels into their yellow leathery bills, to find them swallowed down before I can think of where to find the next. Oh, it's 'entertaining' in the largest, literalist, dreariest sense of the word. So I have told a few lies this morning, and come off here for quietness and the comfort of complaining!"
Lady Harriet threw herself back in her chair, and yawned; Mrs. Gibson took one of her ladyship's hands in a soft sympathizing manner, and murmured,—
"Poor Lady Harriet!" and then she purred affectionately.