"What a poor, stupid creature you are, to be sure!" returned Mrs. Barnaby in a tone of much displeasure. "What in the world can you sigh for now, just at the very moment that I am talking to you of balls and dancing? I wish to Heaven you were a little more like what I was at your age, Agnes! Be so good as to tell me what you are sighing for?"
"I don't know, aunt; I believe I am tired."
"Tired?... and of what, I should like to know? Come, come, let us have no fine lady airs, if you please; and don't look as if you were going to cry, whatever you do. There is nothing on earth I dislike so much as gloom. I am of a very cheerful, happy temper myself, and it's perfect misery to me to see anybody look melancholy.... I declare, Agnes, I am as hungry as a hound!... I don't like to ring for Jerningham again, she looked so horridly cross; and I wish, my dear, you would just toast this round of bread for me. Mrs. Peters was quite right about the fire ... it is such a comfort! and coals are so cheap here.... Let me stir it up a little ... there, now its as bright as a furnace; you can just kneel down in the middle here upon the rug."
Agnes obeyed, and after some minutes' assiduous application to the labour imposed, she presented the toasted bread, her own fair face scarcely less changed in tint by the operation.
"Gracious me, child! what a fright you have made of yourself!... you should have held the other hand up before your face.... You are but a clumsy person, I am afraid, at most things, as well as at satin-stitch. Will you have some more tea, my dear?..." draining, as was her habit, the last drop into her own cup before she asked the question, and then extending her hand to that genial source of hospitality, the tepid urn.
"No more, thank you, aunt.... I will go now, if you please, and take all my things out of your way ... and I shall make my closet so comfortable!..."
"I dare say you will. But stay a moment, Agnes: if you find you have more room than you want, do put my two best bonnet-boxes somewhere or other among your things, so that I can get at them ... so that Jerningham can get at them, I mean, easily."
"I will, if I can, aunt, but I am afraid there will hardly be room for my chair. However, you shall come and see, if you please, yourself, and then you will be the best judge; but I will go first, and get everything in order."
"Very well, then, Agnes, you may tell Jerningham to separate everything like mourning from my things, and give it all to you. And you must contrive, my dear, to cut and make up everything to fit yourself, for I really can be at no expense about it. It is perfectly incredible how money goes in this part of the country, so different from our dear Silverton!... However, I will not grumble about it, for I consider it quite my duty to bring you out into the world, and I knew well enough before I set out, that it could not be done for nothing. But it is a sort of self-devotion I shall never complain of, if you do but turn out well."
Agnes was standing while this affectionate speech was spoken, and having quietly waited for its conclusion, again uttered her gentle "thank you, aunt," and retired to arrange the longed-for paradise of her little closet.