"I have arranged," continued Aunt Sarah, "to read with you for an hour every morning; it is difficult to squeeze it in, but I have managed it. And then I am hoping that you will join in some lessons with the Palmers--girls of your own age, who live near. If their governess will allow you to learn French and German with them, it would be a good plan, and would give you companions besides.--By the way, Anna, Miss Milverton says in her letter that you don't make any progress in your music. How is that?" "I don't care very much for music," said Anna. "I would much rather not go on with it, unless you want me to." She thought that her aunt looked rather relieved, as she remarked that it was useless for people who were not musical to waste their time in learning to play, and that she should not make a point of music-lessons at present. "Now I must cut some roses," added Mrs Forrest, as she put the glowing bunches of sweet-peas into her basket. "Come this way." Anna followed to a little nursery of standard rose-trees near the foot-bridge. "What are those chimneys I can just see straight over the fields?" she asked her aunt. "Leas Farm," she replied. "It belongs to Mr Oswald, a very respectable farmer, who owns a good deal of land round here. We have our milk and butter from him. Your uncle used to keep his own cows, but he found them a trouble, and Mrs Oswald is an excellent dairy woman." Here was an opportunity for Anna's explanation. The words were on her lips, when they were interrupted by the loud sound of a bell from the house. "The breakfast bell!" said Mrs Forrest, abruptly turning away from her roses, and beginning to hasten towards the house, without pausing a moment. "I hope you will always be particular in one point, my dear Anna, and that is punctuality. More hangs upon it than most people recognise: the comfort of a household certainly does. If you are late for one thing, you are late for the next, and so on, until the whole day is thrown into disorder. I am obliged to map my day carefully out to get through my business, and I expect others to do the same. I speak seriously, because your father is one of the most unpunctual men I ever knew; and if you have inherited his failing, you cannot begin to struggle against it too soon." Anna had not been many days at the Vicarage before she found that punctuality was Aunt Sarah's idol, and that nothing offended her more than want of respect to it from others. Certainly everything went like clockwork at Waverley, and though Anna fancied that Mr Forrest inwardly rebelled a little, he was outwardly quite submissive. All Aunt Sarah's arrangements and plans were so neatly fitted into each other that the least transgression in one upset the next, and the effect of this was that she had no odds and ends of leisure to spare. Anna even found it difficult to put all the questions she had in her mind.