it a good deal whilst Bennet was brushing her hair at
night, feeling as if it had been a week-day, and as if it would be as
difficult to begin a new fresh week on Monday morning, as it would a
new day after sitting up a whole night. How far this was occasioned by
Knight Sutton habits, and how far it was her own fault, was not what she
asked herself, though she sat up for a long time musing on the change
in her way of life, and scarcely able to believe that it was only last
Sunday that she had been sitting with her mother over their fire at
Rocksand. Enough had happened for a whole month. Her darling project was
fulfilled; the airy castle of former days had become a substance, and
she was inhabiting it: and was she really so very much happier? There
she went into a reverie--but musing is not meditating, nor vague
dreamings wholesome reflections; she went on sitting their, chiefly
for want of energy to move, till the fire burnt low, the clock struck
twelve, and Mrs. Frederick Langford exclaimed in a sleepy voice, "My
dear, are you going to sleep there?"

CHAPTER VIII.

Breakfast was nearly over on Monday morning, when a whole party of the
Sutton Leigh boys entered with the intelligence that the great pond in
Knight's Portion was quite frozen over, and that skating might begin
without loss of time.

"You are coming, are you not, Bee?" said Alex, leaning over the back of
her chair.

"O yes," said she, nearly whispering "only take care. It is taboo
there,"--and she made a sign with her hand towards Mrs. Langford, "and
don't frighten Aunt Mary about Fred. O it is too late, Carey's doing the
deed as fast as he can."

Carey was asking Fred whether he had ever skated, or could skate, and
Fred was giving an account of his exploits in that line at school,
hoping it might prove to his mother that he might be trusted to take
care of himself since he had dared the danger before. In vain: the
alarmed expression had come over her face, as she asked Alexander
whether his father had looked at the ice.

"No," said Alex, "but it is perfectly safe. I tried it this morning, and
it is as firm as this marble chimney-piece."

"He is pretty well to be trusted," said his grandfather, "more
especially as it would be difficult to get drowned there."

"I would give a shilling to anyone who could drown himself there," said
Alex.

"The travelling man did," exclaimed at once Carey, John, and Richard.

"Don't they come in just li