THE next morning, I waked feeling weary and weak enough. Amabel was already up, and I saw her seated near the window with her work. I lay a little while thinking over what had happened, feeling both ashamed of myself, and vexed at Mrs. Thorpe. What right had she, a tradeswoman, to set up to dictate to, and order a gentleman's daughter? And yet, at the bottom of my heart, I felt that she was right, and I was wrong. I made a move presently, and Amabel came to me. "Is it very late?" I asked. "Have you been up long?" "It is not late, but I have been up more than an hour!" answered Amabel. "I have been thinking about a great many things, Lucy. When you are dressed, I will tell you what they are." "Well! Now tell me your thoughts!" said I, as I finished my rosary, (which I still said every morning), and sat down on the other side of the window. "I hope they are not very deep, or I shall not understand them, for I feel dreadfully stupid and heavy. What would Mother Prudentia say to our being out till eleven o'clock, and that at a play?" "She would say we were very wrong, and so we were," answered Amabel with decision. "Lucy, we must never do such a thing again." "I don't think it was anything to make such an ado about!" I answered. "We could not help going with my lady at last." "But we could have helped it at first!" returned Amabel. "We might have listened to Mrs. Crump, when she told us what was right." "Mrs. Thorpe has no right to order us so!" I said, speaking out what I had been thinking. "She has a perfect right, seeing that my aunt has placed us under her care!" said Amabel, "Think too, how kind she has been to us. How good she was last night; she did not wish to turn you out of her house, because you had a headache, like that other woman." I remembered this, and began to feel ashamed of myself, for thinking of our kind hostess as I had done, and at last I agreed with Amabel that we had done wrong, and must ask pardon, as much as if it had been Mother Superior that we had offended. My heart began to feel a little lightened, when arrived at this point, for the time when conscience stings us worst, is while we are refusing to allow that it stings at all. We knew that Mrs. Thorpe spent a little time in her closet every morning before she came to breakfast, and we determined to seek her there. "There is another thing I have been considering!" said Amabel, when this matter was finally settled. "We have lived a very idle life, lately. Just think! We have been here nearly three weeks, and what have we to show for it? Not one thing." "We have read a good deal!" I answered. "Yes! But not in a way to do us any good. We have not done any lessons, or worked, either for ourselves or the poor; we have not kept to any rule, such as we have always been used to."