Page:Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey (1st edition), Volume 3 (Agnes Grey).djvu/329

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
AGNES GREY.
321

her maid to conduct me to my room and see that I had everything I wanted: it was a small, unpretending, but sufficiently comfortable apartment.

When I descended thence—having divested myself of all travelling encumbrances, and arranged my toilet with due consideration for the feelings of my lady hostess—she conducted me herself to the room I was to occupy when I chose to be alone, or when she was engaged with visiters, or obliged to be with her mother-in-law, or otherwise prevented, as she said, from enjoying the pleasure of my society. It was a quiet, tidy little sitting-room, and I was not sorry to be provided with such a harbour of refuge.

"And sometime," said she, "I will show you the library; I never examined its shelves, but, I dare say, it is full of wise books, and you may go and burrow among then whenever you please; and now you shall have some tea—it will soon be dinner time, but, I thought, as you were accustomed to dine at one, you would perhaps like better to have a cup of tea about this time, and to dine when we lunch; and then, you know, you can have your tea in this room, and that will save you from having

P 5