"It is a part of the house," said Amy, "and you know we must get home. This is the shortest way to it, Margaret," she continued, pointing to a dark overgrown walk; "you know it leads over the wooden bridge to the private garden, without our being obliged to go to the front of the house."
"The shortest way is the best," muttered Miss Cunningham; "I hate being walked to death."
Amy thought it would have been more civil to have kept her remarks to herself; but she supposed the observation was not intended to be heard, and they went on, Miss Cunningham complaining the whole way either of the narrowness of the path, or the inconvenience of the briars, or the heat of the sun, and making both Margaret and Amy very much repent having her with them.
The walk, however, did at last come to an end; and as they turned a sharp angle of the building, and came suddenly upon the chapel, with its gray buttresses half covered with ivy, standing out upon a smooth square of velvet turf, and concealed from the pleasure-ground by a thick shrubbery and one or two splendid chestnut trees, Amy forgot how unlike her companions were to herself, and involuntarily exclaimed, "Is it not beautiful!"
"How odd!" said Miss Cunningham; "why, it is a church."
"It is very gloomy," observed Margaret; "I don't often come here."
"Not gloomy," said Amy, "only grave."
"Well! grave or gloomy, it is all the same. I wish, Amy, you would learn not to take up one's words so. And now we are come here, I don't think we can get in. You should have remembered that this door is always locked; do run into the house, and ask Bridget for the key, and we will wait here."
Amy instantly did as she was desired, but had not gone ten yards before she returned. "You know, Margaret," she said, "that I cannot see Bridget, because I must not go amongst the servants. I never have been since the first night you came, when my aunt was so angry with me."
"But," replied Margaret, "mamma is engaged with Lord Rochford now; you will be sure not to meet her."