inconsistent with obedience to Lady Barbara.

When dressed, Kate had to descend to the drawing-room, and there
await her aunts coming up from dinner. She generally had a book of
her own, or else she read bits of those lying on the tables, till
Lady Barbara caught her, and in spite of her protest that at home she
might always read any book on the table ordered her never to touch
any without express permission.

Sometimes the aunts worked; sometimes Lady Barbara played and sang.
They wanted Kate to sit up as they did with fancy work, and she had a
bunch of flowers in Berlin wool which she was supposed to be
grounding; but she much disliked it, and seldom set three stitches
when her aunts' eyes were not upon her. Lady Jane was a great
worker, and tried to teach her some pretty stitches; but though she
began by liking to sit by the soft gentle aunt, she was so clumsy a
pupil, that Lady Barbara declared that her sister must not be
worried, and put a stop to the lessons. So Kate sometimes read, or
dawdled over her grounding; or when Aunt Barbara was singing, she
would nestle up to her other aunt, and go off into some dreamy fancy
of growing up, getting home to the Wardours, or having them to live
with her at her own home; or even of a great revolution, in which,
after the pattern of the French nobility, she should have to maintain
Aunt Jane by the labour of her hands! What was to become of Aunt
Barbara was uncertain; perhaps she was to be in prison, and Kate to
bring food to her in a little basket every day; or else she was to
run away: but Aunt Jane was to live in a nice little lodging, with
no one to wait on her but her dear little niece, who was to paint
beautiful screens for her livelihood, and make her coffee with her
own hands. Poor Lady Jane!