“Aurora Fiddlestick,” cried Mrs. Eastwood, which, after all, was no argument; “don’t let me hear any more such nonsense. As if any girl that was ever born could alter one’s position in one’s own house! I am surprised at you, Ellinor. Make haste now and dress; we are much later than usual in consequence of your foolish talk. I suppose I must go to this fresh expense about the stables after what the Major says,” she added, with care on her brow; “though I am sure Frederick will no more be able to keep horses when I die than I am now. And I don’t see why I should keep them up for remote posterity--my great grandson, perhaps, who, if he is able to afford it at all, should be able to build stables for himself. I don’t think I will do it, Nelly. I will send for old Sclater to-morrow, and have the roof looked to. These men talk as if we were made of money, especially men who have the public money to fall back upon. It is very pleasant, I don’t doubt, to see work done and places kept up when you never have any bills to pay.” This little speech was delivered partly on the stairs as Mrs. Eastwood went up to dress, followed by her daughter. Nelly, I am afraid, was not much interested about the stables, and made no reply; but she put her head into the little room before she began to dress, and contemplated it, admiring yet doubtful. She had been reading “Aurora Leigh” all the morning, and the poetry had gone to Nelly’s head, as poetry is apt to do when one is twenty. She wondered if English nature, as represented by the elms and the lime trees, with no hills at all, not even a green slope for a background, would seem as tame to her cousin as English scenery in general had done to Aurora. Nelly herself had never yet been farther than Paris, and had seen no scenery to speak of. The blue spring sky and the primrose-covered grass,--the play of sunshine and shadow further on in the year through the silken green of the limes--the moonlight pouring down the avenue--filled her own heart with a flood of soft delight. That was because she knew no better, she argued humbly with herself; but the other, who had seen Alps and Apennines, and snowy peaks and Italian skies! “I wonder if she will think us tame too,” Nelly said to herself with a little shiver, as she went back to her own room and applied herself to the work of dressing. She reflected that in books the stranger, the orphan, the dependent, generally has it all her own way; but that, at the same time, there was something to be said on the other side for the tame, stay-at-home people, who did their best to satisfy the poetic nature, even if they did not succeed. Perhaps Miss Leigh herself, Aurora’s aunt, who had not bargained for a poet, might have had her story too. On the whole Nelly, having completed the little room, was somewhat depressed about its inmate. It was pretty, but she had not been able to give quite the ideal effect she had intended. In