Book 6 - Chapter 1 - Page 2

soaked in a dessert-spoonful of cream daily?"

"Quite wrong."

"Well, then, Dr. Kenn has been preaching against buckram, and you
ladies have all been sending him a roundrobin, saying, 'This is a hard
doctrine; who can bear it?'"

"For shame!" said Lucy, adjusting her little mouth gravely. "It is
rather dull of you not to guess my news, because it is about something
I mentioned to you not very long ago."

"But you have mentioned many things to me not long ago. Does your
feminine tyranny require that when you say the thing you mean is one
of several things, I should know it immediately by that mark?"

"Yes, I know you think I am silly."

"I think you are perfectly charming."

"And my silliness is part of my charm?"

"I didn't say _that_."

"But I know you like women to be rather insipid. Philip Wakem betrayed
you; he said so one day when you were not here."

"Oh, I know Phil is fierce on that point; he makes it quite a personal
matter. I think he must be love-sick for some unknown lady,--some
exalted Beatrice whom he met abroad."

"By the by," said Lucy, pausing in her work, "it has just occurred to
me that I never found out whether my cousin Maggie will object to see
Philip, as her brother does. Tom will not enter a room where Philip
is, if he knows it; perhaps Maggie may be the same, and then we
sha'n't be able to sing our glees, shall we?"

"What! is your cousin coming to stay with you?" said Stephen, with a
look of slight annoyance.

"Yes; that was my news, which you have forgotten. She's going to leave
her situation, where she has been nearly two years, poor thing,--ever
since her father's death; and she will stay with me a month or
two,--many months, I hope."

"And am I bound to be pleased at that news?"

"Oh no, not at all," said Lucy, with a little air of pique. "_I_ am
pleased, but that, of course, is no reason why _you_ should be
pleased. There is no girl in the world I love so well as my cousin
Maggie."

"And you will be inseparable I suppose, when she comes. There will be
no possibility of a _tête-à -tête_ with you any more, unless you can
find an admirer for her, who will pair off with her occasionally. What
is the ground of dislike to Philip? He might have been a resource."

"It is a family quarrel with Philip's father. There were very painful
circumstances, I believe. I never quite understood them, or knew them
all. My uncle Tulliver was unfortunate and lost all his property, and
I think he considered Mr. Wakem was somehow the cause of it. Mr. Wakem
bought Dorlcote Mill, my uncle's old place, where he always lived. You
must remember my uncle Tulliver, don't you?"