"It is Monday morning, my dears, and I find Ellis and Morris require my attention for a longer time than I expected," Mrs. Hamilton said, as she entered the school-room, and found the three girls preparing their books, "so I must set you all to work, and see how well you can get on without me till eleven, when I will rejoin you. I shall order the carriage at half-past twelve, and if all I require is completed, we will pay your favorite old ruin a visit, Emmy; the morning is so lovely, that I think we may venture to take our sketch-books, and see what other part of Berry Pomeroy we can take pencil possession of."
Such an anticipation was quite enough for Emmeline. Her dance about the room was only checked by the idea that her lessons would never be ready, nor her exercises and sums done, unless she sat quietly down, and so, with a great effort, she gave all her attention to her various tasks, and mastered them even before her mother returned. Ellen, though she tried quite as much, was not so successful. The Prince William would sail in miniature on her slate, over all her figures. The recollection of the awful storm they had encountered on their voyage to England would return so vividly, that the very room seemed to heave. And then--but she could not make out why she should think about that then--her mother's death-bed came before her and her promise, and it seemed harder still to part with Edward, from a vague dread that came over her, but still she tried to attend to what she had to do, and congratulated herself on its completion before her aunt appeared.
Caroline, alone, was determined not to work. Because she had not made herself miserable enough already, the most unfounded jealousy entered her head from seeing her mother's caressing kindness toward Ellen at breakfast; why was not her manner as kind to her! She was quite as unhappy, and her mother must see it, but she took no notice of her--only of Ellen. She might be cross sometimes, but she never told stories or tried to hide her faults, and it was very hard and unjust that she should be treated so like a child, and Ellen made so much of; and so she thought and thought, not attempting to do a single thing till she actually made herself believe, for the time, that her kind, indulgent mother had no love for her; and every thing looked blacker than before.