"How do you do, Kate?" said she, putting two of her cold bony fingers into my hand. "I'm afraid you will find it rather dull here after London; but it is _wholesome_ for young people to be occasionally sobered a little."
Aunt Horsingham is tall and thin, with a turn-up nose, rather red at the point, a back that never stoops, and a grim smile that never varies. She dresses in bright colours, affecting strange and startling contrasts, both of hues and material. Her hands are always cold and seldom clean; and she has sundry uncomfortable notions about damping the spirits of youth and checking the exuberance of its gaiety which render her a perfect terror and bugbear to the rising generation. When I was a little thing, laughing, prattling, and giggling, as children will, an admonishing look from my aunt, with a gaunt finger held aloft, and a cold "Kate, don't be silly, my dear," was always sufficient to make me dull and gloomy for the rest of the day.
I should like to know indeed why children are not to be "_silly_." Are grown-up people always so rational in their amusements or irreproachable in their demeanour? "Let the child alone," poor Uncle Harry used to say; and once I overheard him mutter, "I've more patience with a _young_ fool than an _old_ one." Such training has not had a good effect on Cousin Amelia. She has been so constantly tutored to conceal her emotions and to adopt the carriage and manners of an automaton that the girl is now a complete hypocrite. It is quite impossible to make her out. If you tickled her, I don't believe you could get her to laugh; and if you struck her, I very much doubt whether she would cry. My aunt calls it "self-command;" I call it "imbecility." She shook hands with me in her provokingly patronizing manner--"hoped I had brought my horses with me" (as if I was coming to spend months at Dangerfield without Brilliant!); "supposed I had my side-saddle in the cap-box;" and showed me my room without so much as a single kind word of welcome or a cousinly caress. It was quite a relief to help dear Aunt Deborah to unpack her dressing-case, and kiss her pleasant face, and give her the warm cup of tea without which Aunt Deborah never dreams of dressing for dinner.