--

"Do you doubt what I say?"

"No, indeed!" said she, "I have no doubt that you were at the cottage at
the time; but I was thinking that if the apartments at Arnwood were more
splendid, those at your cottage are less comfortable. You have been
used to better and to worse, and therefore will, I trust, be content
with these."

"I trust I have shown no signs of discontent. I should indeed be
difficult to please, if an apartment like this did not suit me.
Besides, allow me to observe, that although I stated that the apartments
at Arnwood were on a grander scale, I never said that I had ever been a
possessor of one of them."

Patience smiled and made no reply.

"Now that you know your way to your apartment, Master Armitage, we will,
if you please, go back to the sitting-room," said she. As they were
going back into the sitting-room she said--"When you come over on
Monday, you will, I presume, bring your clothes in a cart? I ask it,
because I promised some flowers and other things to your sisters, which
I can send back by the cart."

"You are very kind to think of them, Mistress Patience," replied Edward;
"they are fond of flowers, and will be much pleased with possessing
any."

"You sleep here to-night, I think my father said?" inquired Patience.

"He did make the proposal, and I shall gladly avail myself of it, as I
am not to trust to Phoebe's ideas of comfort this time," said Edward,
smiling.

"Yes, that was a cross action of Phoebe's; and I can tell you, Master
Armitage, that she is ashamed to look you in the face ever since; but
how fortunate for me that she was cross, and turned you out as she did!
You must forgive her, as she was the means of your performing a noble
action; and I must forgive her, as she was the means of my life being
saved."

"I have no feeling except kindness towards Phoebe," replied Edward;
"indeed I ought to feel grateful to her! For if she had not given me so
bad a bed that night, I never should have been so comfortably lodged as
it is proposed that I shall be now."

"I hope you are hungry, Edward," said Clara; "dinner is almost ready."

"I daresay I shall eat more than you do, Clara."

"So you ought, a great big man like you. How old are you, Edward?" said
Clara; "I am thirteen; Patience is past sixteen: now how old are you?"

"I am not yet eighteen, Clara; so that I can hardly be called a man."

"Why, you are as tall as Mr Heatherstone."

"Yes, I believe I am."

"A