“There will be plenty of time for work between this and Christmas; I wish that you would keep quiet and let me rest,” yawned Agnes.
“You can rest if you wish it; I won’t make a noise,” replied Dora. “But for my part I like to be up and doing. You know that:
‘Early to bed, and early to rise, Is the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.’”
Agnes said nothing in contradiction of the old proverb which her sister had quoted, but turned round on her pillow, and with a weary yawn composed herself again to sleep. She thought that it would be time enough to get up when Susan should call her at a quarter to seven, and she only wished that Dora had thought so also, for it fidgeted Agnes to hear her moving about in the room. But Dora had cared as little about disturbing the sleep of a sickly sister as she had about letting her mother go out in the rain. Dora admired her own energy, and looked upon Agnes almost with scorn, as being lazy, cold, and dull, with not a bit of enthusiasm in her nature.
“We should not have had a model worth looking at had the embroidery been left to her,” said Dora to herself, not without a feeling of self-complacence, as she glanced at her twin who had again sunk into slumber.
It will be remembered that Dora had resolved to unpick all the work that she had sewn upon the preceding Sunday. As soon as the little girl had hastily finished her toilet, so hastily that she forgot to button her sleeves or put on her collar, she opened her workbox, took out her work, and seated herself as close to the window as possible, in order to catch as much as she could of the dim light of dawn. It might have been expected that Dora would also have forgotten to say her prayers, but such was not the case. She remembered to kneel down by her bedside and hurry through a mere form of words, without paying the slightest attention to their meaning, thinking of her embroidery all the time. It was a satisfaction to the conscience of Dora that she had repeated a prayer, and she never stopped to ask herself whether that prayer were not in itself a sin.
Dora with needle and scissors set first to her work of unpicking. But every one who has tried such an occupation must know it to be one of the most tedious and disagreeable of tasks. It was doubly so to Dora, because she greatly admired the embroidery work which she was thus beginning to spoil.
