Melwyn dreaded few things in this world more than cross looks in those about her, especially in Randall; and that Randall knew perfectly well. "She must be fallen asleep in her chair, poor thing. It was very thoughtless of me," Mrs. Melwyn did not say, but would have said, if people ever did speak to themselves aloud. Even in this sort of mute soliloquy she did not venture to say, "Randall will be very ill-tempered and unreasonable." She rang again; and then, after a proper time yielded to the claims of offended dignity, it pleased Mrs. Randall to appear. "I am very sorry, Randall. Really I had no idea how late it was. I was thinking about Miss Catherine, and I missed it when it struck ten. I had not the least idea it was so late," began the mistress in an apologizing tone, to which Randall vouchsafed not an answer, but looked like a thunder cloud--as she went banging up and down the room, opening and shutting drawers with a loud noise, and treading with a rough heavy step; two things particularly annoying, as she very well knew, to the sensitive nerves of her mistress. But Randall settled it with herself--that as her mistress had kept her out of bed an hour and a half longer than usual, for no reason at all but just to please herself, she should find she was none the better for it. The poor mistress bore all this with patience for some time. She would have gone on bearing the roughness and the noise, however disagreeable, as long as Randall liked; but her soft heart could not bear those glum, cross looks, and this alarming silence. "I was thinking of Miss Catherine's marriage, Randall. That was what made me forget the hour. What shall I do without her?" "Yes, that's just like it," said the insolent abigail; "nothing ever can content some people. Most ladies would be glad to settle their daughters so well; but some folk make a crying matter of every thing. It would be well for poor servants, when they're sitting over the fire, their bones aching to death for very weariness, if _they'd_ something pleasant to think about. They wouldn't be crying for nothing, and keeping all the world out of their beds, like those who care for naught but how to please themselves." Part of this was said, part muttered, part thought; and the poor timid mistress--one of whose domestic occupations it seemed to be to study the humors of her servants--heard a part and divined the rest. "Well, Randall, I don't quite hear all you are saying; and perhaps it is as well I do not; but I wish you would give me my things and make haste, for I'm really very tired, and I want to go to bed." "People can't make more haste than they can." And so it went on. The maid-servant never relaxing an atom of her offended dignity--continuing to look as ill-humored, and to do every thing as disagreeably as she possibly could--and her poor victim, by speaking from time to time in an anxious, most gentle, and almost flattering manner, hoping to mollify her dependent; but all in vain.