scolding; I fancy I was outrageously rude; but when people talk such
stuff, I do not much care what I say, as long as I am on the other
side of the question.'

'Still the reverse of wrong is not always right,' said Anne.

They now found themselves at the nursery door, and summoned the
children from that scene of playthings, and bread and butter. Down-
stairs, one of those games at romps arose, for which little children
are often made an excuse by great ones, and which was only concluded
by the entrance of the ladies from the drawing-room, which caused
Harriet hastily to retreat into the inner drawing-room, to smoothe
her ruffled lace; while Katherine was re-tying Winifred's loosened
sash, and laying a few refractory curls in their right places.

Mrs. Woodbourne called Elizabeth, and introduced her as 'my eldest
daughter,' to Mrs. Bouverie, and to Mrs. Dale, a lady who had lately
come to live in the neighbourhood, and who discovered a most striking
resemblance between Mrs. Woodbourne and Elizabeth, certainly at the
expense of a considerable stretch of imagination, as Mrs. Woodbourne
was a very little and very elegant looking person, very fair and
pale, and Elizabeth was tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired, her figure much
too slender for her height, and her movements too rapid to be
graceful, altogether as different a style of person as could well be
imagined.

Not much prepossessed in favour of the party in general by this
specimen, Elizabeth, after shaking hands with Miss Maynard and her
niece, people whom she seldom saw, and did not much like, retreated
to one of the windows, and there began to meditate, as was her usual