"_If_ you go. Oh, you're sure to go. You're so sanguine; every new prospect is so promising. But pardon me, you seem quite to have forgotten that reading to the old general, and playing backgammon with him, are among your specified employments." "Well, I don't see much harm in it if they are. A man can't be very cross with one when one's reading to him--and as for the backgammon, I mean to lose every game, if that will please him." "Oh, a man can't be cross with a reader? I wish you knew as much of the world as I do, and had heard people read. Why, nothing on earth puts one in such a fidget. I'm sure I've been put into such a worry by people's way of reading, that I could have pinched them. Really, Lettice, your simplicity would shame a child of five years old." "Well, I shall do my best, and besides I shall take care to set my chair so far off that I can't get pinched, at least; and as for a poor, ailing, suffering old man being a little impatient and cross, why one can't expect to get fifty pounds a year for just doing nothing.--I do suppose it is expected that I should bear a few of these things in place of Mrs. Melwyn; and I don't see why I should not." "Oh, dear! Well, my love, you're quite made for the place, I see; you always had something of the spaniel in you, or the walnut-tree, or any of those things which are the better for being ill-used. It was quite a proverb with our poor mother, 'a worm will turn, but not Lettice.'" Lettice felt very much inclined to turn now. But the mention of her mother--that mother whose mismanagement and foolish indulgence had contributed so much to poor Myra's faults--faults for which she now paid so heavy a penalty--silenced the generous girl, and she made no answer. No answer, let it proceed from never so good a motive, makes cross people often more cross; though perhaps upon the whole it is the best plan. So Myra in a still more querulous voice went on: "This room will be rather dismal all by one's self, and I don't know how I'm to go about, up and down, fetch and carry, and work as you are able to do.... I was never used to it. It comes very hard upon me." And she began to cry. "Poor Myra! dear Myra! don't cry: I never intended to leave you. Though I talked as if I did, it was only in the way of argument, because I thought more might be said for the kind of life than you thought; and I felt sure if people were tolerably kind and candid, I could get along very well and make myself quite comfortable. Dear me! after such hardships as we have gone through, a little would do that. But do you think, poor dear girl, I could have a moment's peace, and know you were here alone? No, no."