"Pray please yourself, Doctor Urquhart; come, or not come; but I can't wait." He looked at me with an amused air;--yes, I certainly have the honour of amusing him, as a child or a kitten would--then said,-- "He would be happy to join us." I was ashamed of myself for being thus pettish with a person so much older and wiser than I, and who ought to be excused so heartily for any peculiarities he has; yet he vexed me. He does vex me very much, sometimes. I cannot understand why; it is quite a new feeling to be so irritated with anybody. Either it is his manner, whieh is rather variable, sometimes cheerful and friendly, and then again restless and cold; or an uncomfortable sensation of being under control, which I never yet had, even towards my own father. Once, when I was contesting something with him, Augustus noticed it, and said, laughing:-- "Oh, the Doctor makes everybody do what he likes: you'd better give in at once. I always do." But I cannot, and I will not. To feel vexed with a person, to know they have the power of vexing you--that a chance word or look can touch you to the quick, make you feel all over in a state of irritation, as if all the world went wrong, and you were ready to do anything cross, or sullen, or childishly naughty--until another chance word or look happens to set you right again--this is an extremely uncomfortable state of things. I must guard against it. I must not allow my temper to get way. Sensitive it is, I am aware, quick to feel sore, and to take offence; but I am not a thoroughly ill-tempered woman. Doctor Urquhart does not think so: he told me he did not. One day, when I had been very cross with him, he said "I had done him no harm; that I often did him good." Me--to do good to Doctor Urquhart! What an extraordinary thing! I like to do people good--to do it my own self, too--a mean pleasure, perhaps, yet it is a pleasure, and I was pleased by this saying of Doctor Urquhart's. If I could but believe it! I do believe it sometimes. I know that I can make him smile, let him be ever so grave; that something in me and my ways interests and amuses him in an inglorious, kittenish fashion, as I said; yet, still, I draw him out of himself, I make him merry, I bring light into his face till one could hardly believe it was the same face that I first saw at 'the Cedars; and it is pleasant to me to think that, by some odd sympathy or other, I am pleasant to him, as I am to few--alas! to very few.