"Poor Charlotte!" Joyce said; "she, at any rate, knows very well what dullness means. But I must not stay; remember you and mother are to spend Christmas with us in Great George Street."
The Clifton of fifty-five year's ago might not present such an appearance of gaiety on a fine afternoon as it does now; but, nevertheless, the Downs and Observatory were sprinkled with people, well dressed, in carriages, or Bath chairs, or on foot.
It was decided that the carriage should be ordered by Joyce from the stables at the back of Sion Hill, as she went to Windsor Terrace; that Mrs. Falconer, Piers, and Charlotte should drive to the turnpike on the Down, and then come to the top of Granby Hill, and wait there for Joyce. Charlotte was quite content with this arrangement, and watched Joyce's departure after dinner with some satisfaction. She rather liked to be alone with Mrs. Falconer, who, as she knitted, listened to her little complaints with patience, if not with expressed sympathy. Mrs. Arundel, on the contrary, thought Charlotte needed rousing, and was intolerant of perpetual headaches and low spirits.
There were many unoccupied young women like Charlotte, fifty years ago, without any particular aim in life, except a vague idea that they ought to be married. The years as they passed, often went by on leaden wings. Charlotte was amiable and gentle; and Miss Falconer, disappointed with the result of her training, would say: "Poor dear Charlotte has not strong health; so different from Joyce, who was a perfect rustic in that, as in other things." But Joyce was married, and Charlotte remained single, and had not even the satisfaction of recounting her many conquests, as her aunt so frequently did.
There is no more honourable and noble life than that of the single woman who bravely takes up her lot, and works her way to independence, by industry and the cultivation of the gifts God has given her, for which the opportunities in these days are so many. But there is—I had almost said was—no life more pitiable, than that of the woman whose youth is passing, and who, having to accept her position as unmarried, does so with a bad grace, and pines for what, by her very melancholy views of life, she puts more and more beyond her reach, and who is perpetually thinking of her own little pains and troubles, and forgets to be at leisure from herself, to sympathise with those of others.
"Joyce did not ask me to go and see Mrs. More; though we stayed at Barley Wood together," Charlotte was saying. "However, I dare say Mrs. More would not remember me."
"Her memory is getting short now," said Mrs. Falconer; "she reaped a pretty harvest for her over-indulgence of her servants; teaching them things that were above their station in life was the beginning of it. They cheated her through thick and thin, and some gentlemen had to interfere, and break up the household for her, poor old lady!"
"It must be a change for her to live in Windsor Terrace, after that lovely place," Charlotte said.
"Not greater than for me to change Fair Acres for Down Cottage; but my day is over, and it suits me very well, and Piers is happy, while Harry and Ralph like to come here sometimes, and I like to be near Joyce and the dear children."
"I think Falcon is rather tiresome and noisy," Charlotte said. "Joyce does not reprove him as she ought."