Cytherea was an acquisition, and the greeting was hearty.
'Good afternoon! O yes--Miss Graye, from Miss Aldclyffe's. I have seen you at church, and I am so glad you have called! Come in. I wonder if I have change enough to pay my subscription.' She spoke girlishly.
Adelaide, when in the company of a younger woman, always levelled herself down to that younger woman's age from a sense of justice to herself--as if, though not her own age at common law, it was in equity.
'It doesn't matter. I'll come again.' 'Yes, do at any time; not only on this errand. But you must step in for a minute. Do.' 'I have been wanting to come for several weeks.' 'That's right. Now you must see my house--lonely, isn't it, for a single person? People said it was odd for a young woman like me to keep on a house; but what did I care? If you knew the pleasure of locking up your own door, with the sensation that you reigned supreme inside it, you would say it was worth the risk of being called odd. Mr. Springrove attends to my gardening, the dog attends to robbers, and whenever there is a snake or toad to kill, Jane does it.' 'How nice! It is better than living in a town.' 'Far better. A town makes a cynic of me.' The remark recalled, somewhat startlingly, to Cytherea's mind, that Edward had used those very words to herself one evening at Budmouth.
Miss Hinton opened an interior door and led her visitor into a small drawing-room commanding a view of the country for miles.
The missionary business was soon settled; but the chat continued.
'How lonely it must be here at night!' said Cytherea. 'Aren't you afraid?' 'At first I was, slightly. But I got used to the solitude. And you know a sort of commonsense will creep even into timidity. I say to myself sometimes at night, "If I were anybody but a harmless woman, not worth the trouble of a worm's ghost to appear to me, I should think that every sound I hear was a spirit." But you must see all over my house.' Cytherea was highly interested in seeing.
'I say you _must_ do this, and you _must_ do that, as if you were a child,' remarked Adelaide. 'A privileged friend of mine tells me this use of the imperative comes of being so constantly in nobody's society but my own.' 'Ah, yes. I suppose she is right.' Cytherea called the friend 'she' by a rule of ladylike practice; for a woman's 'friend' is delicately assumed by another friend to be of their own sex in the absence of knowledge to the contrary; just as cats are called she's until they prove themselves he's.