"Every one does not care to be staring abroad in service time," retorted Felicia. "But you are a regular Puritan. I advise you to keep your notions to yourself at Stanton Court, or you will soon get into trouble. The lady will not care to have her daughter's head filled with such fancies." "I trust my daughter will have sufficient modesty to prevent her intruding her opinions on anybody, whether at home or abroad," said my mother, not without emphasis. "I dare say she will soon learn it," said Felicia, who is the only one in the family that ever answers mother back. "Poor relations and waiting gentlewomen get plenty of snubbing." Whenever any one checks Felicia in the least, she always begins to talk about poor relations. I do honestly think that she presumes upon her position as a dependent, knowing that mother will never utterly lose patience with her, because she is my dear father's youngest sister. She has been in one of her worst moods all day, and nothing pleases her. She found fault with the dinner, and snubbed me and the children, till mother at last roused herself and gave her such a setting down as reduced her to silence and sulks for the rest of the meal. After dinner, I was going to sit down to my work again, but mother stopped me. "No, my dear. This is your last Saturday at home, perhaps for a long time, and you shall not spend it all over the needle. Do you and Dick go out together and have a fine long walk. 'Tis a pleasant afternoon, and you can visit all your old haunts before dark." "But then you and Felicia, will have all the work to do," I objected, though my heart leaped at the thought of one more long solitary walk with Dick—a thing I had hardly dared to hope for. "Oh, never mind 'me,'" said Felicia, in a voice which trembled with rage. "'I' am nobody—only fit for a drudge and slave. Nobody cares for me, or thinks of me, now that my poor dear brother is gone." And with that she began to cry. Mother checked me as I began to speak, and sent me for my hood and cloak. When I came back, she met me at the door. "It is best not to answer Felicia when she is in one of these moods," said she. "Poor thing, she suffers more than any one else from her unhappy temper." I am not so sure of that. I do think she finds a certain enjoyment in being miserable and making others so. It is rather too bad in her, thus to try to spoil Dick's holiday, but she was always jealous of his fondness for me. However, I said nothing, of course, and Dick and I were soon out in the lane. We meant to go and see the old people at the almshouses, and then across the deer-park to the spring, and so home by the church. We found Goody Crump sitting up reading her Bible, as usual, with everything tidy and pleasant about her, but she complained sadly of the weather. "Why, Goody, I thought it seasonable weather for March!" said I. "You know they say a peck of dust in March is worth a king's ransom."