"Oh, I'm going to enjoy myself too," I say brightly; "I shall have a long gossip with my sisters in the morning, and in the afternoon I shall go down by the sea."
"And take a book?"
"No. I have such heaps to think about!"
"People?"
"Plenty!—Mother, and Jack, and Dolly, and—and others."
"And others?" he repeats, bending his head to look into my face. "Tell me, amongst these others is there—a Lubin?"
CHAPTER VI.
"In the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice."
At Luttrell our letters are brought up to us with our cup of early tea. Wise men tell us that our inveterate habit of tea-drinking is in reality but another form of dram-drinking, and that we are hardly less to be blamed than the poor gin-soddened wretches who reel hither and thither in our streets, a blot and a shame upon our country's manhood. They love their strong, coarse, deadly cups, and fly to them over ruined homes and women's broken hearts, and their own lost souls; and we who love our delicate, piquant, refreshing cup of tea, fly to it also, and reap our reward in shattered nerves and a hundred and one of the intangible, irritable disorders that our grandmothers and great-grandmothers never knew, or so many of them had not lived to such a full and healthy old age. It is a habit of self-indulgence, no doubt; and, perhaps, if the liquid really intoxicated us, we should have a tough battle with our inclination, and give it up. Fortunately, however, it does nothing of the sort.
I have only one letter, and it lies on the tray, staring me in the
