Sophie laughed at the comical air with which her sister repeated the sentence; yet, when her laugh was gone, there remained a slight shadow of disappointment. She, too, was unwillingly aware of some alteration.
"Is she such a grand lady as you expected?" asked she.
"Oh, my dear, grandeur's a humbug, let me tell you. Gracious! by the time I'd been there a week, I could put it on as well as anybody. Aunt Margaret, she was no end of a swell, and all that; but, as for grandeur!—And she was such an odd old thing. Sometimes I seemed to like her, and sometimes she almost made me faint. Once in a while I thought she was trying to pump me about something; though, to be sure, there was nothing in me to be pumped. I told her about Abbie, for one thing, as much as I knew, and she seemed awfully interested—it was put on, I suppose, very likely; and yet she really did seem to mean it. I remember she couldn't get over my forgetting Abbie's last name: she even told me to mention it the first time I wrote to her. So queer of the old person."
"No necessity for you to write, my dear," observed the professor at this point. "I've been intending to do it myself for some time, and I'll thank her for her hospitality, and so forth."
Cornelia nodded, yawned, and then allowed her eyes to wander around the room.
"How nice and cozy and home-like every thing does look! And so small. Why, I should almost believe I was looking through the small end of the telescope, or something."
"New York houses are so big, I suppose?" said Sophie.
"Gracious, dear!" exclaimed Cornelia, laughing again. "Why, the very cupboards are bigger than this whole house. It'll take me ever so long to get over being afraid to knock my head against something when I stand up."
"You can sit out-doors until the weather gets too cold," observed the professor. "The sky is as high here as in New York, isn't it?"
Cornelia ignored this remark with admirable self-poise. "Aunt Margaret was asking a good deal about Mr. Bressant, too," said she. "She said she'd only heard about him from you, papa; but I thought, sometimes, she must be fibbing. Once in a while, you know, she acted just as if she had forgotten having said she didn't know him. However, that's absurd, of course. By-the-way, where is he? Here still?"