"How peaceful it seems here," said Ethel in a low tone. "I think I should like to come and be a Sister with you, Mary."
Miss Castlemaine smiled one of her sad smiles. "That would never do, Ethel."
"You will find usefulness in another sphere. It would not be right that you should bury yourself here."
"We all told you that, Mary, you know, at Greylands' Rest. But you have done it."
"My dear, the cases are essentially different. My hopes of happiness, my prospects in the world were over: yours, Ethel, are not even yet in the bud. When some good man shall woo and win you, you will find where your proper sphere of usefulness lies."
"I don't want to be won," spoke Ethel: just as young girls are given to say. "I'm sure I would ten times be a Grey Sister than marry Harry Castlemaine."
Mary looked up with unusual quickness. The words brought to her mind one of the incidents of the past night.
"Harry does not continue to tease you, does he, Ethel?"
"Yes he does. I thought he had left it off: but this morning he brought the subject up again--and he let everybody hear him!"
"Not very much. It was when he was going out of the room after breakfast. He turned his head to me and said he hoped I should soon be ready with my answer to the question he had put to me more than once. Papa and mamma must have understood what he meant. I could have thrown the loaf after him."
"I think he must be only doing it in joke, Ethel," was the slow, thoughtful rejoinder.
"I don't know whether he is or not. Sometimes I think he is; at others I think he is in earnest: whichever it may he, I dislike it very much. Not for the whole world would I marry Harry Castlemaine."
"Ethel, I fancy--I am not sure, but I fancy--you have no real cause to fear he will press it, or to let it trouble you. Harry is hardly staid enough yet to settle down. He does many random things."
"We have had quite a commotion at home this morning," resumed Ethel, passing to another topic. "Somebody locked Flora in her bedroom last night--when she wanted to run out this morning as usual, the door was fast. Mamma has been so angry: and when the news of Polly Gleeson's accident came up just now, she began again, saying Flora might just as well have been burnt also as not, burnt to death."