But Kate, watching her, looked very grave and thoughtful. She had not been used to blessings. Perhaps in her whole past she had never earned one so true and heartfelt before. The sensation was strange, almost oppressive, opening up a new series of hopes, feelings, interests, and reflections, with certain wistful misgivings, that she, fair, fast, flighty Kate Cremorne had hitherto mistaken the chief objects of existence, wasted her life, and thrown herself away.
CHAPTER XXVII.
A HOUSEHOLD KATE.
"What an odd girl you are, Kate!" said Mrs. Battersea, as the sisters sat at breakfast next morning in their pretty suburban garden, with a table drawn under the acacia-tree, and as many birds, roses, and strawberries about them as if they were a hundred miles from London. "You lost the best chance yesterday that ever woman had, and all because you couldn't be in time for a train. My dear, I don't often scold; but it does provoke me to see you throw yourself away. I begin to think you'll never settle, Kate. You're worse than I was; you're worse than I am now!"
"That's a bad state of things," answered Kate saucily. "I shouldn't have thought it possible. But what's the use of settling, Auntie." The elder sister had once been taken for the younger's aunt, and the nickname had stuck to her. "You talk as if I was some sort of mess on a kitchen hob. Why should I settle, and why do you stir me up? I'm very nice as I am."
"So Mr. Goldthred seems to think!" answered her sister; "and if you'd only been with us yesterday, you'd have had him to yourself the whole afternoon. I'm sure he was disappointed; and to see the barefaced way that odious little Rosie made up to him was quite sickening! Kate—Kate—don't you want an establishment of your own?"
"What's the good?" replied the other, dipping a bit of cake in her coffee. "I'm very happy as I am—
'O give me back my hollow tree,
My crust of bread, and liberty!'
Freedom and simplicity, say I; communism, equality, and fraternity!"