; but they disregarded the daughter as a schoolgirl. Happily they
appeared no more after the dinner; but Nuttie's first exclamation of
astonished disgust was silenced at once by her mother with unusual
determination, 'You must not speak so of your father's friends.'

'Not when--'

'Not at all,' interrupted Mrs. Egremont.

The only sense of promotion to greatness that Ursula had yet enjoyed
was in these fine clothes, and the maid whom Lady Kirkaldy had
recommended, a grave and severe-looking person, of whom both stood
somewhat in awe. The arrival at Bridgefield had been too late for
anything to be taken in but a general impression of space and
dreariness, and the inevitable dinner of many courses, after which
Nuttie was so tired out that her mother sent her to bed.

Since the waking she had made some acquaintance with the house. There
was no show of domestics, no curtseying housekeeper to parade the new
mistress over the house; Mr. Egremont had told his wife that she must
fill up the establishment as she pleased, but that there was an
admirable cook downstairs, and he would not have her interfered
with--she suited his tastes as no one else did, and she must be left to
deal with the provisions and her own underlings. There was a stable
establishment, and a footman had been hired in town, but there was
besides only one untidy-looking housemaid, who began by giving warning;
and Alice and Nuttie had roamed about without meeting any one from the
big wainscotted dining-room with faded crimson curtains and family
portraits, the older grimy, the younger chalky, to the two
drawing-rooms, whose gilding and pale blue damask had been preserved by
pinafores of brown holland; the library, which looked and smelt as if
Mr. Egremont was in the habit of sitting there, and a big
billiard-room, all opening into a shivery-feeling hall, with Scagliola
columns and a few dirty statues between them; then upstairs to a
possible morning-room, looking out over a garden lawn, where mowing was
going on in haste, and suites of dreary shut-up fusty bedrooms.
Nuttie, who had notions of choosing her own bower, could not make up
her mind which looked the least inviting. It did not seem as if girls
could ever have laughed together, or children clattered up and down the
stairs. Mrs. Egremont begged her to keep possession for the present at
least of the chamber where the grim housemaid had chosen to put her,
and which had the advantage of being aire