'm afraid you will find it rather dull here after
London; but it is _wholesome_ for young people to be occasionally
sobered a little."

Aunt Horsingham is tall and thin, with a turn-up nose, rather red at
the point, a back that never stoops, and a grim smile that never
varies. She dresses in bright colours, affecting strange and startling
contrasts, both of hues and material. Her hands are always cold and
seldom clean; and she has sundry uncomfortable notions about damping
the spirits of youth and checking the exuberance of its gaiety which
render her a perfect terror and bugbear to the rising generation. When
I was a little thing, laughing, prattling, and giggling, as children
will, an admonishing look from my aunt, with a gaunt finger held
aloft, and a cold "Kate, don't be silly, my dear," was always
sufficient to make me dull and gloomy for the rest of the day.

I should like to know indeed why children are not to be "_silly_." Are
grown-up people always so rational in their amusements or
irreproachable in their demeanour? "Let the child alone," poor Uncle
Harry used to say; and once I overheard him mutter, "I've more
patience with a _young_ fool than an _old_ one." Such training has not
had a good effect on Cousin Amelia. She has been so constantly tutored
to conceal her emotions and to adopt the carriage and manners of an
automaton that the girl is now a complete hypocrite. It is quite
impossible to make her out. If you tickled her, I don't believe you
could get her to laugh; and if you struck her, I very much doubt
whether she would cry. My aunt calls it "self-command;" I call it
"imbecility." She shook hands with me in her provokingly patronizing
manner--"hoped I had brought my horses with me" (as if I was coming to
spend months at Dangerfield without Brilliant!); "supposed I had my
side-saddle in the cap-box;" and showed me my room without so much as
a single kind word of welcome or a cousinly caress. It was quite a
relief to help dear Aunt Deborah to unpack her dressing-case, and kiss
her pleasant face, and give her the warm cup of tea without which Aunt
Deborah never dreams of dressing for dinner.

Oh, those solemn, heavy, silent, stupid dinners, with the massive
plate and the dark oak wainscoting, and the servants gliding about
like ghosts at a festival in Acheron! What a relief it would have been
even to have had a clownish footman spill soup over one's dress, or
ice-cream down one's back, or anything to