"My shepherd is the living Lord.
Nothing therefore I need;
In pastures green near pleasant streams
He setteth me to feed."
Then my cousin read prayers. Nobody who has not been placed in like circumstances can guess how strange it seemed to me to be reading the holy Word and singing psalms with open windows and in absolute security. I saw the girls look at one another and smile, but by no means unkindly, when I started nervously at a passing footstep outside. It all added to that bewilderment which had been stealing over me all the morning, and which seemed now and then to quite take away all knowledge of where I was or what I was doing.
The breakfast was very nice, with abundance of cream and new milk, fresh-laid eggs, and brown and white bread, but I could take nothing save a glass of milk, which I had hard work to dispose of. I saw them all look at me with concern, and again Cousin Marianne asked me whether I were ill.
"No, madame," I answered; "I am not ill at all."
I caught a look of surprised reproof from my mother, and became aware that I had answered pettishly.
"Indeed, I am not ill," I said more gently; "please do not think so."
I suppose it was a part of the bewilderment of my head that I somehow felt annoyed and hurt that any one should think I was not well.
My cousins came round me after breakfast, and carried me off to the room I had seen in the morning.
"This is our own den," said Katherine, the elder sister. "To-morrow we will show you our books and work. The lute is Paulina's, and the virginals are mine. Eleanor does not play or sing at all."
"But she works very nicely," put in Pauline, the second sister, while Eleanor never spoke a word, but looked at me like a good dog, which says with his eyes what his tongue cannot utter; "and she can tell tales better than any of us when she is in the mood. Can you tell tales, Cousin Vevette?"