cares! O, why was it not so?
And yet grandpapa said it was for the best! And in what a manner he did
say it, as if he really felt and saw, and knew the advantage of it!
To dear papa himself I know it was for the best, but for us, mamma,
grandpapa--no, I never shall understand it. They were good before; why
did they need punishment? Is this what is called saying 'Thy will be
done?' Then I shall never be able to say it, and yet I ought!"

"Your head a little higher, if you please, Miss Henrietta," said Bennet;
"it is that makes me so long dressing you, and your mamma has been
telling me that I must get you ready faster."

Henrietta slightly raised her head for the moment, but soon let it sink
again in her musings, and when Bennet reminded her, replied, "I can't,
Bennet, it breaks my neck." Her will was not with her mother's, in a
trifling matter of which the reasonableness could not but approve itself
to her. How, then, was it likely to be bent to that of her Heavenly
Parent, in what is above reason?

The toilet was at length completed, and in time for her to be handed
in to dinner by Alexander, an honour which she owed to Beatrice having
already been secured by Frederick, who was resolved not to be again
abandoned to Jessie. Alex did not favour her with much conversation,
partly because he was thinking with perturbation of the task set him for
the evening, and partly because he was trying to hear what Queen Bee was
saying to Fred, in the midst of the clatter of knives and forks, and the
loud voice of Mr. Roger Langford, which was enough to drown most other
sounds. Some inquiries had been made about Mrs. Geoffrey Langford and
her aunt, Lady Susan St. Leger, which had led Beatrice into a great
lamentation for her mother's absence, and from thence into a description
of what Lady Susan exacted from her friends. "Aunt Susan is a regular
fidget," said she; "not such a fidget as some people," with an
indication of Mrs. Langford. "Some people are determined to make others
comfortable in a way of their own, and that is a fidget to be regarded
with considerable respect; but Aunt Susan's fidgeting takes the turn
of sacrificing the comfort of every one else to her own and her little
dog's."

"But that is very hard on Aunt Geoffrey," said Fred.

"Frightfully. Any one who was less selfish would have insisted on
mamma's coming here, instead of which Aunt Susan only complains of her
sister and brother, and everybody else, for goin