ome sort of a dinner had come in her way.

"Yes,--and you think it comes from heaven, I suppose."

"It comes by God's goodness and your bounty, Aunt Stanbury."

"And how will it come when I'm dead? Or how will it come if things
should go in such a way that I can't stay here any longer? You don't
ever think of that."

"I should go back to mamma, and Priscilla."

"Psha! As if two mouths were not enough to eat all the meal there is
in that tub. If there was a word to say against the man, I wouldn't
ask you to have him; if he drank, or smoked, or wasn't a gentleman,
or was too poor, or anything you like. But there's nothing. It's all
very well to tell me you don't love him, but why don't you love him?
I don't like a girl to go and throw herself at a man's head, as those
Frenches have done; but when everything has been prepared for you
and made proper, it seems to me to be like turning away from good
victuals." Dorothy could only offer to go home if she had offended
her aunt, and then Miss Stanbury scolded her for making the offer. As
this kind of thing went on at the house in the Close for a fortnight,
during which there was no going out, and no society at home, Dorothy
began to be rather tired of it.

At the end of the fortnight, on the morning of the day on which
Brooke Burgess was expected back, Dorothy, slowly moving into the
sitting room with her usual melancholy air, found Mr. Gibson talking
to her aunt. "There she is herself," said Miss Stanbury, jumping
up briskly, "and now you can speak to her. Of course I have no
authority,--none in the least. But she knows what my wishes are."
And, having so spoken, Miss Stanbury left the room.

It will be remembered that hitherto no word of affection had been
whispered by Mr. Gibson into Dorothy's ears. When he came before to
press his suit, she had been made aware of his coming, and had fled,
leaving her answer with her aunt. Mr. Gibson had then expressed
himself as somewhat injured, in that no opportunity of pouring forth
his own eloquence had been permitted to him. On that occasion Miss
Stanbury, being in a snubbing humour, had snubbed him. She had in
truth scolded him almost as much as she had scolded Dorothy, telling
him that he went about the business in hand as though butter wouldn't
melt in his mouth. "You're stiff as a chair-back," she had said to
him, with a few other compliments, and these amenities had for a
while made him regard the establishment at Heavitre