st criticisms Murr the Cat may be passing on us
beings of wider speculation?

"It is very painful," said Dorothea, feeling scourged. "I can have no
more to do with the cottages. I must be uncivil to him. I must tell
him I will have nothing to do with them. It is very painful." Her eyes
filled again with tears.

"Wait a little. Think about it. You know he is going away for a day
or two to see his sister. There will be nobody besides Lovegood."
Celia could not help relenting. "Poor Dodo," she went on, in an
amiable staccato. "It is very hard: it is your favorite _fad_ to draw
plans."

"_Fad_ to draw plans! Do you think I only care about my
fellow-creatures' houses in that childish way? I may well make
mistakes. How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among
people with such petty thoughts?"

No more was said; Dorothea was too much jarred to recover her temper
and behave so as to show that she admitted any error in herself. She
was disposed rather to accuse the intolerable narrowness and the
purblind conscience of the society around her: and Celia was no longer
the eternal cherub, but a thorn in her spirit, a pink-and-white
nullifidian, worse than any discouraging presence in the "Pilgrim's
Progress." The _fad_ of drawing plans! What was life worth--what great
faith was possible when the whole effect of one's actions could be
withered up into such parched rubbish as that? When she got out of the
carriage, her cheeks were pale and her eyelids red. She was an image
of sorrow, and her uncle who met her in the hall would have been
alarmed, if Celia had not been close to her looking so pretty and
composed, that he at once concluded Dorothea's tears to have their
origin in her excessive religiousness. He had returned, during their
absence, from a journey to the county town, about a petition for the
pardon of some criminal.

"Well, my dears," he said, kindly, as they went up to kiss him, "I hope
nothing disagreeable has happened while I have been away."

"No, uncle," said Celia, "we have been to Freshitt to look at the
cottages. We thought you would have been at home to lunch."

"I came by Lowick to lunch--you didn't know I came by Lowick. And I
have brought a couple of pamphlets for you, Dorothea--in the library,
you know; they lie on the table in the library."

It seemed as if an electric stream went through Dorothea, thrilling her
from despair into expectation. They were pamphlets abou