"Do you remember the beech-copse just beyond Hillside Road? The
windows of my room look out in that direction, far away, beyond the
Woolgreaves grounds; I can see the tops of the trees, and the winding
road beyond them. I go up to my room every evening, to see the sun set
behind the hill there, and to think of the many times we walked there
and talked of what was to be. Will it ever be, Walter? Were we not
foolish boy and girl--foolish paupers? Ay, the word, hard, ugly, but
_true_. When I look round this room I feel it, oh, so true! Mamma and
I have a pretty sitting-room, and a bedroom each on opposite sides of
it. Such rooms the very simplicity and exquisite freshness of their
furniture and appointments are more significant of wealth, of the ease
of household arrangement, and the perfection of household service,
than any amount of rich upholstery. And then the drawing-rooms,
and the girls' rooms, and the music-room, and the endless spare
rooms--which, by-the-by, are rarely occupied; for so rich a man, and
one with such a house, Mr. Creswell seems to me to have singularly
little society. No one but the clergyman and his wife has been since
we came. I thought it might be out of delicate consideration for us
that Mr. Creswell might have signified a wish for especial privacy,
but I find that is not the case. He said to me to-day that he feared
we found Woolgreaves dull. I do not. I have too much to think of to be
affected by anything of that kind; and as my thoughts are rarely of a
cheerful order, I should not ingratiate myself by social agreeability.
Our life is quietly luxurious. I adhere to my old habits of early
rising; but I am the only person in the house who enjoys the beauty of
the gardens and grounds in the sweet morning. We breakfast at ten, and
mamma and the girls go out into the lawn or into the garden, and they
chat to her and amuse her until luncheon. I usually pass the morning
in the library, reading and writing, or talking with Mr. Creswell. It
is very amusing and interesting to me to hear all about his career,
how he made so much money, and how he administers it. I begin to
understand it very well now. I don't think I should make a bad woman
of business by any means, and I am sure everything of the kind would
have a great interest for me, even apart from my desire for money, and
my conviction that neither happiness nor repose is to be had in this
world without it. The old gentleman seems surprised to find me
interested and intelligent about what he calls such dry detail; but,
just as books and pictures are interesting, though one may never hope
to possess them, so money, though it does not belong to myself, and
never can, interests me. Oh, my dearest Walter, if we had but a
little, just a few hundreds of pounds, and Mr. Creswell could teach
you how to employ it with advantage in some commercial undertaking! He
began with little more than one thousand pounds, and now! But I might
as well wish you had been born an archbishop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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