"Well, my child, welcome. Have you come to Wells with your father?"
"Yes, auntie; and I am come here for dinner, and after dinner may Charlotte come and do some shopping with me? I have a long list of commissions at the china shop and at Wilmott's."
"Charlotte will be pleased to accompany you, dear child; and when you have taken off your bonnet, come and tell me home news."
There were not many stairs to ascend to Charlotte's bedroom, which looked into the gardens at the back of two other houses of some pretension, between the Vicar's Close and the Deanery.
Charlotte curled herself up in the deep window-seat, and watched her cousin as she laid aside her large bonnet, smoothed her hair, and arranged her white pelerine over her pelisse. Charlotte had a genuine, if rather romantic, admiration for her cousin Joyce. Though a good girl, she was somewhat given to sentiment and languishing, complained of being fatigued, of headaches, and low spirits. She fed upon romance and poetry—the poetry of albums and keepsakes, which was then fashionable. Of course she had a hero who figured in her day-dreams; and she would spend hours at the little window of the sitting-room to catch a sight of him as he passed along the Close. Charlotte would have been much better for some active employment; but Miss Falconer was getting old and feeble in health, and if Charlotte was obedient and gentle, she was well satisfied. So she worked covers in cross-stitch for the chairs, knitted her own stockings, read all the light literature which came in her way, and played on the cabinet piano which stood against the wall in the sitting-room, with its crimson silk front gathered into the centre by a large rosette, and displaying, when open, a very narrow keyboard with very yellow keys.
The Vicar's Close, Wells.
"How sweetly pretty you look to-day, Joyce. I can't help saying so. Don't be angry. I want to read you some verses I have written, called, 'The Drooping Rosebud.'" And Charlotte took out of her pocket the crumpled page of a copy-book.
"You had better not read it now, Charlotte; Aunt Letitia will expect us to go downstairs."