you are too young for late dinner. When your cousins come home, of
course things will be regularly arranged.'

'That means,' I thought to myself, 'that I shall have all my meals
alone, I suppose,' and again an unreasonably cross feeling came over me.

Grandmamma noticed it, I think, but she said nothing, and very soon
after we had finished tea she proposed that I should go to bed. She took
me upstairs herself to my room, and waited till I was in bed; then she
kissed me as lovingly and tenderly as ever, but, all the same, no sooner
had she left me alone than I buried my face in the pillow and burst into
tears. I had an under feeling that grandmamma was not quite pleased with
me. I know now that she was only anxious, and perhaps a little
disappointed, at my not seeming brighter. For, after all, everything she
had done and was doing was for my sake, and I should have trusted her
and known this by instinct, instead of allowing myself from the very
first beginning of our coming to London to think I was a sort of martyr.

'I can see how it's going to be,' I thought, 'as soon as ever Mr. and
Mrs. Vandeleur come back I shall be nowhere at all and nobody at all in
this horrid, gloomy London. Cousin Agnes will be grandmamma's first
thought, and I shall be expected to spend most of my life up in my room
by myself. It is too bad, it isn't my fault that I am an orphan with no
other home of my own. I would rather have stayed at Windy Gap, however
poor we were, than feel as I know I am going to do.'

But in the middle of all these miserable ideas I fell asleep, and slept
very soundly--I don't think I dreamt at all--till the next morning.

When I opened my eyes I thought it was still the night. There seemed no
light, but by degrees, as I got accustomed to the darkness, I made out
the shapes of the two windows. Then a clock outside struck seven, and
gradually everything came back to me--the journey and our arrival and
the unhappy thoughts amidst which I had fallen asleep.

Somehow, even though as yet there was nothing to cheer me--for what can
be gloomier than to watch the cold dawn of a winter's morning creeping
over the gray sky of London?--somehow, things seemed less dismal
already. The fact was I had had a very good night, and was feeling
rested and refreshed, so much so that I soon began to fidget and to wish
that some one would come with my hot water and say it was time to get
up.

This did not happen till half-past seven, w