Here comes Ambrose Catterall up the walk, and I must go down, though I
do not expect there will be any fun. He will stay supper, I dare say,
and then he and Father will have a game of whist with Sophy and Fanny,
and I shall sit by with my sewing, and Hatty will knit and whisper into
my ear things that I want to laugh at and dare not. If I did, Father
would look up over his cards with a black brow and say "Silence!" in
such a tone that I shall wish I was somebody else. Who I don't know--
only not Caroline Courtenay.

Father does not like our names--at least mine and Sophy's. Mamma named
us, and he says we have both fine romantic silly names. Hatty was
called after his mother, and that he likes; and Fanny is after a sister
of Mamma's who died young. But Father never gives over growling because
one of us was not a boy.

"Four girls!" he says: "four girls, and never a lad! Who on earth wants
four girls? I'll sell one or two of you cheap, if I can find him."

But I don't think he would, if it came to the point. I know, for all
his queer speeches sometimes, he is proud of Fanny's good looks, and
Sophy's good housekeeping, and even Hatty's pert sayings. I know by the
way he chuckles now and then when she says anything particularly smart.
I don't know what he is proud of in me, unless it is my manners. Of
course, having lived in Carlisle with Grandmamma, I have the best
manners of any. And I speak the best, I know. Sophy talks shockingly
broad; she says, "Aw wanted him to coom, boot he would not." Fanny has
found that will not do, so she tries to imitate my Aunt Dorothea and
Amelia Bracewell, but she goes on the other side of her pattern, and
does not sound the u full where she ought to do it, but says, "The basin
is fell of shegar." Hatty laughs at them both, and lets her u go where
it likes, but she is not so bad as Sophy.

I think I shall try and put the notion into my Aunt Kezia's head to have
the Bracewells here for Christmas. I know Angus and Flora will be here
then, and later. That would make a decent party, if we got Ephraim
Hebblethwaite, and Ambrose Catterall too.

After all, I went on writing so late, that I only got down-stairs in
time to see Ambrose Catterall's back as he went down the drive. He
could not stay for some reason--I did not hear what. Father growled as
he heard him go off, singing, down the walk.

"Where on earth did the fellow get hold of that piece of whiggery?" said
he.