Celia had no disposition to recur to disagreeable subjects.
It had been her nature when a child never to quarrel with any one--
only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her, and looked
like turkey-cocks; whereupon she was ready to play at cat's cradle
with them whenever they recovered themselves. And as to Dorothea,
it had always been her way to find something wrong in her sister's
words, though Celia inwardly protested that she always said just
how things were, and nothing else: she never did and never could
put words together out of her own head. But the best of Dodo was,
that she did not keep angry for long together. Now, though they
had hardly spoken to each other all the evening, yet when Celia put
by her work, intending to go to bed, a proceeding in which she was
always much the earlier, Dorothea, who was seated on a low stool,
unable to occupy herself except in meditation, said, with the musical
intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her speech
like a fine bit of recitative--

"Celia, dear, come and kiss me," holding her arms open as she spoke.

Celia knelt down to get the right level and gave her little
butterfly kiss, while Dorothea encircled her with gentle arms
and pressed her lips gravely on each cheek in turn.

"Don't sit up, Dodo, you are so pale to-night: go to bed soon,"
said Celia, in a comfortable way, without any touch of pathos.

"No, dear, I am very, very happy," said Dorothea, fervently.

"So much the better," thought Celia. "But how strangely Dodo goes
from one extreme to the other."