we know, and
even after we are scarcely sure; and some things, such as the poor
little 'Marchioness's' orange-peel and water, we have to 'make believe
very hard' in order to like at all. But home when we have been away, and
friends when we have been lonely, and water when we are thirsty, and the
sea always!--we never ask ourselves if those are good,--we know." Then
my face burnt. How it would burn in those girlish days!

And how foolish I felt, or had begun to feel, when Miss Dudley slowly
answered, looking mercifully away from me and at the waves: "Very true,
Miss Morne! You speak from your heart, and to mine."

The clouds were forbearing, and allowed us time afterwards for a visit
to the gorgeous garden. We walked to the summer-house at the very end,
from which a winding path began to climb the hill. There Miss Dudley
paused. "My chamois days are over, for the present, at least," said she.
"We must wait for my little nieces or nephew to escort you up there.
Shall we go in?"

When we did so, I thought that the interior of the cottage was not much
less grand, scarcely less beautiful, than what we had seen without. At
that period most housekeepers held the hardly yet exploded heresy, not
only that fresh air was a dangerous and unwholesome luxury, to be
denied, as far as might be, to any but the strongest constitutions,[2]
but that even sunshine within the doors was an inadmissible intrusion,
alike untidy and superfluous. On these points this house set public
opinion at defiance. It was set, of set purpose, at _wrong_ angles to
the points of the compass. Every wind of heaven could sweep it, at the
pleasure of the inmates, through and through, and the piazzas were so
arranged that there was not a single apartment in it into which the sun
could not look, through one window or another, once at least in the
twenty-four hours. The floors were tiled, ingrained, oiled,
matted,--everything but carpeted, except that of the state drawing-room;
and there the Wilton had a covering over it, removed, as I afterwards
found, only on occasions of state. The whole atmosphere seemed full of
health, purity, cheerfulness, warmth, and brightness. Brilliant flowers
peeped in at the windows, and were set on the tables in vases, or hung
in them from the walls. And there were pictures, and there were statues,
but there too was Miss Dudley, paring a peach for me, for sociability's
sake,--for she could not eat one herself, so soon after her breakf