"Well, what else?" Sophia laughed a little, and laid her cool hand on the girl's hot one.
"I can't be anything grand ever, and begin by being a servant, Miss
Sophia. I say I'm not a servant, and I try not to act like one; but Mrs.
Rexford, she's tried hard to make me one. You wouldn't like to be a
servant, Miss Sophia?"
"You are very childish and foolish," said Sophia. "If I had not been just as foolish about other things when I was your age I would laugh at you now. But I know it's no use to tell you that the things you want will not make you happy, and that the things you don't want would, because I know you will not believe it. I will do my best to help you to get what you want, so far as it is not wrong, if you will promise to tell me all your difficulties."
"Will you help me? Why are you so kind?"
"Because—" said Sophia. Then she said no more.
Eliza showed herself cheered.
"You're the only one I care to talk to, Miss Sophia. The others haven't as much sense as you, have they?"
As these words were quietly put forth in the darkness, without a notion of impropriety, Sophia was struck with the fact that they coincided with her own estimate of the state of the case.
"Eliza, what are you talking of—not of my father and mother surely?"
"Why, yes. I think they're good and kind, but I don't think they've a deal of sense—do you?"