whenever they recovered themselves. And as to Dorothea, it had always been her way to find something wrong in her sister’s words, though Celia inwardly protested that she always said just how things were, and nothing else: she never did and never could put words together out of her own head. But the best of Dodo was, that she did not keep angry for long together. Now, though they had hardly spoken to each other all the evening, yet when Celia put by her work, intending to go to bed, a proceeding in which she was always much the earlier, Dorothea, who was seated on a low stool, unable to occupy herself except in meditation, said, with the musical intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her speech like a fine bit of recitative—
“Celia, dear, come and kiss me,” holding her arms open as she spoke.
Celia knelt down to get the right level and gave her little butterfly kiss, while Dorothea encircled her with gentle arms and pressed her lips gravely on each cheek in turn.
“Don’t sit up, Dodo, you are so pale tonight: go to bed soon,” said Celia, in a comfortable way, without any touch of pathos.
“No, dear, I am very, very happy,” said Dorothea, fervently.
“So much the better,” thought Celia. “But how strangely Dodo goes from one extreme to the other.”
The next day, at luncheon, the butler, handing something to Mr. Brooke, said, “Jonas is come back, sir, and has brought this letter.”
Mr. Brooke read the letter, and then, nodding toward Dorothea, said, “Casaubon, my dear: he will be here to dinner; he didn’t wait to write more—didn’t wait, you know.”