Soon after, they separated for the night.
The next morning, Cecilia took care to fill up her time more advantageously, than in wandering about the house in search of a companion she now expected not to find: she got together her books, arranged them to her fancy, and secured to herself for the future occupation of her leisure hours, the exhaustless fund of entertainment which reading, that richest, highest, and noblest source of intellectual enjoyment, perpetually affords.
While they were yet at breakfast, they were again visited by Miss Larolles. “I am come,” cried she, eagerly, “to run away with you both to my Lord Belgrade's sale. All the world will be there; and we shall go in with tickets, and you have no notion how it will be crowded.”
“What is to be sold there?” said Cecilia.
“Oh, every thing you can conceive; house, stables, china, laces, horses, caps, everything in the world.”
“And do you intend to buy any thing?”
“Lord, no; but one likes to see the people's things.”
Cecilia then begged they would excuse her attendance.
“O, by no means!” cried Miss Larolles; “you must go, I assure you; there'll be such a monstrous crowd as you never saw in your life. I dare say we shall be half squeezed to death.”
“That,” said Cecilia, “is an inducement which you must not expect will have much weight with a poor rustic just out of the country: it must require all the polish of a long residence in the metropolis to make it attractive.”