"To be sure you do," pursued Mrs. Hilliard. "Then don't you think it's pleasant for us now not to be overworked during the day, so that in the evening, instead of going to bed, we can sit round the table in a nice parlour, and sew and knit; or read, for them that likes it. Husband and the girls always did take pleasure in reading--and, for my part, now I've time, I'm beginning to like a book myself. Last winter, I read a good deal in the second volume of the Spectator. In short, I have not the least notion of grieving after our way of living at the old house." "Nor I neither," added Abraham; "and I really find it much more agreeable to superintend my farm, than to be obliged to labour on it myself." "And now let us proceed with our tea," said Mrs. Hilliard; "and, Neddy, if you do not eat hearty of what you see before you, I shall think you are fretting after the mush and milk, and sowins, and pie and cheese, that we use to have on our old supper table, and which I do not believe you could eat now if they were before you. Come, you must not mind my speaking out so plainly. You know I always was a right-down sort of woman, and am so still." Edward smiled, and pressed her hand kindly, acknowledging that all she had said was justified by truth and reason. The carriage--they kept a very plain but a very capacious one--brought home the girls shortly after candle-light. Lindsay ran out to assist them in alighting, and was glad to find that on hearing his name they retained a perfect recollection of him, though they were in their earliest childhood at the time of his departure for Europe. When they came into the light, he found them both very pretty. Their skins had not been tanned by exposure to the sun and wind, nor their shoulders stooped, nor their hands reddened by hard work; as had been the case with their two elder sisters. They were dressed in white frocks, blue shawls, and straw bonnets with blue ribbons; neatly, and in good taste. The evening passed pleasantly, and Lindsay soon discovered that the daughters of his host were very charming girls. Ellen, perhaps, had a little tinge of vanity, but Lucy was entirely free from it. Diffidence prevented her from talking much, but she listened understandingly, and when she did speak, it was with animation and intelligence. Lindsay felt that he should not have liked her so well had she looked, and dressed, and talked as he remembered her elder sisters. When he retired for the night, his bed and room were so well furnished, and looked so inviting, that he could not regret the little low apartment with no chimney and only one window, that he had occupied in the old farm-house; and he slept quite as soundly under a white counterpane as he had formerly done under a patch-work quilt.