Page:The Last Chronicle of Barset Vol 2.djvu/105

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WHY DON'T YOU HAVE AN "IT" FOR YOURSELF?
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Now go. No, Conway, not a word; I will not hear a word. You must go, or I must." Then she rose quickly from her lowly attitude, and prepared herself for a dart at the door. It was better by far that he should go, and so he went.

An American when he has spent a pleasant day will tell you that he has had "a good time." I think that Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, if she had ever spoken the truth of that day's employment, would have acknowledged that she had had "a good time." I think that she enjoyed her morning's work. But as for Conway Dalrymple, I doubt whether he did enjoy his morning's work. "A man may have too much of this sort of thing, and then he becomes very sick of his cake." Such was the nature of his thoughts as he returned to his own abode.


CHAPTER LII.


WHY DON'T YOU HAVE AN "IT" FOR YOURSELF?

Of course it came to pass that Lily Dale and Emily Dunstable were soon very intimate, and that they saw each other every day. Indeed, before long they would have been living together in the same house had it not been that the squire had felt reluctant to abandon the independence of his own lodgings. When Mrs. Thorne had pressed her invitation for the second, and then for the third time, asking them both to come to her large house, he had begged his niece to go and leave him alone. "You need not regard me," he had said, speaking not with the whining voice of complaint, but with that thin tinge of melancholy which was usual to him. "I am so much alone down at Allington, that you need not mind leaving me." But Lily would not go on those terms, and therefore they still lived together in the lodgings. Nevertheless Lily was every day at Mrs. Thorne's house, and thus a great intimacy grew up between the girls. Emily Dunstable had neither brother nor sister, and Lily's nearest male relative in her own degree was now Miss Dunstable's betrothed husband. It was natural therefore that they should at any rate try to like each other. It afterwards came to pass that Lily did go to Mrs. Thorne's house, and she stayed there for awhile; but when that occurred the squire had gone back to Allington.

Among other generous kindnesses Mrs. Thorne insisted that Bernard should hire a horse for his cousin Lily. Emily Dunstable rode daily, and of course Captain Dale rode with her;—and now Lily joined the