"Well I never saw anything like the sideboard down-stairs; the sideboard and the tea-table. It is funny, Lois, as I said, why some should have so much, and others so little."
"We, you mean? What should we do with a load of silver?"
"I wish I had it, and then you'd see! You should have a silk dress, to begin with, and so should I."
"Never mind," said Lois, letting her eyelids fall again with an expression of supreme content, having finished her gruel. "There are compensations, Madge."
"Compensations! What compensations? We are hardly respectably dressed, you and I, for this place."
"Never mind!" said Lois again. "If you had been sick as I was, and in that place, and among those people, you would know something."
"What should I know?"
"How delightful this chair is;—and how good that gruel, out of a china cup;—and how delicious all this luxury! Mrs. Wishart isn't as rich as I am to-night."
"The difference is, she can keep it, and you cannot, you poor child!"
"O yes, I can keep it," said Lois, in the slow, happy accent with which she said everything to-night;—"I can keep the remembrance of it, and the good of it. When I get back to my work, I shall not want it."