n to
countenance his old friends. Alice, in the midst of her sorrow,
recollected this with consternation.

'My dear, my dear, hush! You must stop yourself! Remember we have to
go out.'

'Go--out,' cried Nuttie, her sobs arrested by very horror. 'You
wouldn't go--!'

'I am afraid your father would be very much vexed--'

'Let him! It is a horrid wicked place to go to at all; and now--when
dear, dear old Mrs. Nugent is lying there--and--'

The crying grew violent again, and in the midst in walked Mr. Egremont
with an astonished 'What is all this?'

'We have lost one of our dear kind old friends at Micklethwayte,' said
Alice, going towards him; 'dear old Mrs. Nugent,' and she lifted up her
tear-stained face, which he caressed a little and said, 'Poor old
body;' but then, at a sob, 'Can't you stop Ursula from making such a
row and disfiguring herself? You must pick up your looks, Edda, for I
mean you to make a sensation at Jerningham's.'

'Oh, Alwyn, if you could let us stay at home! Mrs. Nugent was so good
to us, and it does seem unkind--' The tears were in her eyes again.

'Nonsense!' he said impatiently. 'I promised Jerningham, and it is
absurd to have you shutting yourself up for every old woman at
Micklethwayte.'

Thereupon Ursula wiped away her tears, and stood up wrathful before
him. 'I am not going,' she said.

'Oh, indeed!' he returned in a tone that made her still more angry.
'Hein'! a French ejaculation which he had the habit of uttering in a
most exasperating manner.

'No,' she said. 'It is scarcely a place to which we even ought to be
asked to go, and certainly not when--'

'Do you hear that, Mrs. Egremont?' he asked.

'Oh, Nuttie, Nuttie, dear!' she implored; 'don't.'

'No, mother,' said Nuttie, with flashing eyes; 'if you care so little
for your best friends as to let yourself be dragged out among all sorts
of gay, wicked people when your dear friend is lying dead, I'm sure I
shan't go with you.'

Her father laughed a little. 'A pretty figure you are, to make a
favour of accompanying us!'

'Oh, go away, go away, Nuttie,' entreated her mother. 'You don't know
what you are saying.'

'I do know,' said Nuttie, exasperated perhaps by the contrast in the
mirror opposite between her own swelled, disfigured face, and the soft
tender one of her mother with the liquid eyes. 'I know how much you
care for the dear friends who took care of us when we were forsaken!'

And with this shaf