This was a very pleasant time to the whole household. Their position, their comfort, their external circumstances, were in no respect changed, yet everything was brightened and radiant in an overflow of hope. There was neither ill nor sickness nor sorrow to mar the enjoyment; everything at this period was going well with them, to whom many a day and many a year had gone full heavily. They were not aware themselves of their present happiness; they were all looking eagerly forward, bent upon a future which was to be so much superior to to-day, and none dreamed how little pleasure was to be got out of the realisation, in comparison with the delight they all took in the hope. They could afford so well to laugh at all their homely difficulties--to make jokes upon Mamma’s grave looks as she discovered an extravagant shilling or two in the household accounts--or found out that Susan had been wasteful in the kitchen. It was so odd, so _funny_, to contrast these minute cares with the golden age which was to come. And then the plans and secret intentions, the wonderful committees which sat in profound retirement; Marian plotting with Mamma what Agnes should have when she came into her fortune, and Agnes advising, with the same infallible authority, for the advantage of Marian. The vast and ambitious project of the girls for going to the country--the country or the sea-side--some one, they did not care which, of those beautiful unknown beatific regions out of London, which were to them all fairyland and countries of magic. We suppose nobody ever did enjoy the sea breezes as Agnes and Marian Atheling, in their little white bed-chamber, enjoyed the imaginary gale upon the imaginary sands, which they could perceive brightening the cheek of Mamma, and tossing about the curls of the twin-babies, at any moment of any night or day. This was to be the grand triumph of the time when Agnes came into her fortune, though even Mamma as yet had not heard of the project; but already it was a greater pleasure to the girls than any real visit to any real sea-side in this visible earth ever could be.