Chapter Twelve.
Bought with a Price.
Host. “Trust me, I think ’tis almost day.”
Julia. “Not so; but it hath been the longest night
That e’er I watched, and the most heaviest.”
Shakespeare.
I am writing four days later than my last sentence, and I wonder whether things have finished beginning to happen.
Grandmamma’s Tuesday was the day after I writ. The Newtons were there,—at least Mrs Newton and Miss Theresa,—and ever so many people whom I knew and cared nothing about. My Lady Parmenter came early, but did not stay long; and very late, long after every one else, Ephraim Hebblethwaite. Mr Raymond I did not see, and have not done so for several times.
I was not much inclined to talk, and I got into a corner with some pictures which I had seen twenty times, and turned them over just as an excuse for keeping quiet. All at once I heard Ephraim’s voice at my side:
“Cary, I want to speak to you. Go on looking at those pictures: other ears are best away. How is Hatty?”
“She is better,” I said; “but she is not the old Hatty.”
“I don’t think the old Hatty will come back,” he said. “Perhaps the new one may be better. Are the Miss Bracewells gone home?”