or her, or look for her, or miss her; that her
comings in and goings out were perfectly indifferent to every human
being in the house, called by courtesy her "home." Perhaps this was her
own fault, but she could not help it. It was out of her nature to get up
an interest among ordinary people, where interests there were none.

Little more had she in the house whither she was going to pay one of her
extempore visits; but then there was the habit of old affection, begun
before characters develop themselves into the infinite variety from
which mental sympathy is evolved. She could not help liking Emma
Thornycroft, her sole childish acquaintance, whose elder sister had been
Agatha's daily governess, until she died.

"I know Emma will be glad to see me, which is something; and if she does
tire me with talk about the babies, why, children are better than Berlin
wool. And there is always the piano. Besides, I must walk out, or I
shall rust to death in this horrible Bedford Square."

She walked on, rather in a misanthropic mood, a circumstance to her not
rare. But she had never known mother, sister, or brother; and the
name of father was to her little more than an empty sound. It had
occasionally come mistily over the Indian Ocean, in the shape of formal
letters--the only letters that ever visited the dull London house where
she spent her shut-up childhood, and acquired the accomplishments of her
teens. Mr. Bowen died on the high seas: and when his daughter met the
ship at Southampton, a closed black coffin was all that remained to her
of the name of father. That bond, like all others, was destined to be to
her a mere shadow. Poor Agatha!

Quick exercise always brings cheerfulness when one is young, strong,
and free from any real cares; Agatha's imaginary ones, together with the
vague sentimentalisms into which she was on the verge of falling, yet
had not fallen, vanished under the influence of a cheerful walk on a
sunny summer's day. She arrived at Mrs. Thornycroft's time enough to
find that admirable young matron busied in teaching to her eldest boy
the grand mystery of dining; that is, dining like a Christian, seated
at a real table with a real silver knife and fork. These latter Master
James evidently preferred poking into his eyes and nose, rather than his
mouth, and evinced far greater anxiety to sit on the table than on the
chair.

"Agatha, dear--so glad to see you!" and Emma's look convinced even
Agatha that this w