"
"Please give old Mr. Gould and Mary and Kate my love, and I will run
and ask for some fruit for you to take to them," said Babie, her
tender heart longing to make compensation.
Miss Ogilvie and her pouting companion were received by a
fashionable-—nay, extra fashionable--looking person, whom Mary and
Kate Gould called Cousin Lisette, and the old farmer, Eliza Gould.
While the old man in his chair in the sun in the hot little parlour
caressed, and asked feeble repetitions of questions of his impatient
granddaughter, the lady explained that she had thrown up an excellent
situation as instructress in a very high family to act in the same
capacity to her motherless little cousins. She professed to be
enchanted to meet Miss Ogilvie, and almost patronised.
"I know what the life is, Miss Ogilvie, and how one needs
companionship to keep up one's spirits. Whenever you are left alone,
and would drop me a line, I should be quite delighted to come and
enliven you; or whenever you would like to come over here, there's no
interruption by uncle; and he, poor old gentleman, is quite-—quite
passe. The children I can always dismiss. Regularity is my motto,
of course, but I consider that an exception in favour of my own
friends does no harm, and indeed it is no more than I have a right to
expect, considering the sacrifices that I have made for them.
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