a different colour, as if that part of the pudding had stuck to the
saucepan and got burnt. This was my homely thought, as I con-
templated the box tree. There had been some light snow, overnight,
and it lay nowhere else to my knowledge; but, it had not quite
melted from the cold shadow of this bit of garden, and the wind
caught it up in little eddies and threw it at the window, as if it
pelted me for coming there.

I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in the room,
and that its other occupants were looking at me. I could see
nothing of the room except the shining of the fire in the window
glass, but I stiffened in all my joints with the consciousness that
I was under close inspection.

There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before
I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow
conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that
each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies
and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know
it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug.

They all had a listless and dreary air of waiting somebody's
pleasure, and the most talkative of the ladies had to speak quite
rigidly to suppress a yawn. This lady, whose name was Camilla,
very much reminded me of my sister, with the difference that she
was older, and (as I found when I caught sight of her) of a
blunter cast of features. Indeed, when I knew her better I began
to think it was a Mercy she had any features at all, so very blank
and high was the dead wall of her face.

'Poor dear soul!' said this lady, with an abruptness of manner
quite my sister's. 'Nobody's enemy but his own!'

'It would be much more commendable to be somebody else's
enemy,' said the gentleman; 'far more natural.'

'Cousin Raymond,' observed another lady, 'we are to love our
neighbour.'

' Sarah Pocket,' returned Cousin Raymond, 'if a man is not
his own neighbour, who is?'

Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said (checking
a yawn), 'The idea!' But I thought they seemed to think it.
rather a good idea too. The other lady, who had not spoken yet,
said gravely and emphatically, 'Very true!'

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