CHAPTER IV.
“Thursday morning! Bother—calisthenic day!—I’ll go to sleep again, to put it off as long as I can. If I was only a little countess in her own feudal keep, I would get up in the dawn, and gather flowers in the May dew—primroses and eglantine!—Charlie says it is affected to call sweet-briar eglantine.—Sylvia! Sylvia! that thorn has got hold of me; and there’s Aunt Barbara coming down the lane in the baker’s jiggeting cart.—Oh dear! was it only dreaming? I thought I was gathering dog-roses with Charlie and Sylvia in the lane; and now it is only Thursday, and horrid calisthenic day! I suppose I must wake up.
‘Awake, my soul, and with the sun
Thy daily stage of duty run.’
I’m sure it’s a very tiresome sort of stage! We used to say, ‘As happy as a queen:’ I am sure if the
