Mrs. Kirby was followed by Mr. Moore, who brought a note from his wife, cordially placing at the disposal of the northern party "five pleasant rooms at the rectory," which could be made ready for them at any time upon shortest notice. "They haven't more than six in all," commented Winthrop. "Does this mean, do you suppose, that they intend to shut themselves up into one, and give up to us all the rest?" "Very probably," Margaret answered. But the Moores were not obliged to make good their generous offer. Mrs. Rutherford said that she could not possibly live in the house with an invalid. "Always little messes being carried clinking up-stairs on waiters, or left standing outside of doors for people to tumble over;--cups, with dregs of tea in them, set into each other. Horrid!" "But there are no stairs at the rectory," suggested Winthrop. "Don't be owlish, Evert; one is even more apt to step into them on a ground-floor," replied the aunt. Meanwhile the sea still washed the beach under the eyrie, and now, too, the nerves of almost everybody in it, for neither Margaret nor Celestine could sleep when Mrs. Rutherford could not; even Winthrop, at the Seminole, found himself wakeful, listening to the little soft sound, and thinking of his suffering aunt. For in spite of her fancies and her fairly good appetite, in spite of her rich dressing-gowns and carefully arranged hair, Aunt Katrina undoubtedly did suffer. Already her eyes had begun to have something of a sunken look; to Margaret and Winthrop she appeared sometimes to be seeing them through a slight haze, and to be trying, though ineffectually, to pierce it. "That dreadful water on the beach! that dreadful water!" was still her constant complaint. "Do you think she would like to go down to East Angels?" suggested Dr. Kirby to Margaret one morning. "The motion of a carriage she couldn't bear at present, but she could go down very well in the _Emperadora_." But Margaret thought she would not like it at all. "How do you know, without asking, what I shouldn't like at all?" Aunt Katrina demanded when Margaret repeated to her this little conversation. Aunt Katrina liked to have the little conversations repeated. "Don't imagine, Margaret, I beg, that you know all my feelings by intuition." Later in the day came Evert. "Dr. Kirby has a fantastic plan for your going down to East Angels to stay for a while, Aunt Katrina. But I told him that you didn't like East Angels." "Where did you get that idea? But of course from Margaret, who thinks she knows everything. East Angels is a charming old place." "Oh!" said her nephew, rather astonished, remembering various adjectives she had applied to it; "decayed" had been a favorite one.