slow to discover that
exhibitions, which were merely fashionable gapeseed to her niece, were
to Nuttie real delights, viewed intelligently, and eliciting comments
and questions that Lady Kirkaldy and even her husband enjoyed in their
fresh interest, but which were unendurable weariness to Blanche, unless
she had some one to chatter with. Lectures and lessons, which the aunt
hoped to render palatable by their being shared by the two cousins,
only served to show the difference between a trained and eager, and an
untrained and idle, nature. With the foreign society to be met at Lord
Kirkaldy's, Blanche was less at a loss than her brother, and could get
on by the help of nods and becks and wreathed smiles; but Nuttie, fresh
from her winter abroad, could really talk, and was often in request as
a useful person to help in entertaining. She thus saw some of the
choicest society in London, and, in addition, had as much of the
youthful gaiety as Lady Kirkaldy thought wholesome for the two girls.
Also there were those ecclesiastical delights and privileges which had
been heard of at Micklethwayte, and were within reach, greatly enjoyed
by Mrs. Egremont whenever she could share them, though her daughter
chafed at her treating all except the chief service on Sunday as more
indulgence than duty.

Nuttie was strong, with that spring of energy which unbroken health and
a quiet life lays up, and, in her own phrase, she went in for
everything, from early services to late balls, thinking all right
because it was seldom that her day did not begin with matins or
Celebration, and because she was not taken to more than two balls a
week, and conversed at times with superior people, or looked at those
with world-famed names. Possibly the whirl was greater than if it had
been mere gaiety, for then the brain would not have participated in it.
Church functions, with the scurry to go at all, or to obtain a seat,
fine music, grand sermons, religious meetings, entertainments for the
poor, lectures, lessons, exhibitions, rides, drives, kettle-drums,
garden-parties, concerts, theatres, operas, balls, chattering,
laughing, discussing, reading up current subjects, enjoying attention,
excitement as to what should be done and how,--one thing drove out
another in perpetual succession, and the one thing she never did or
could do was to sit still and think! Rest was simply dreamless sleep,
generally under the spell of a strong will to wake at the appoin