78
THE EUROPEANS.
her father's speech; then she spoke in a manner
that was not in the least an answer to it. "I want
to see how they will live. I am sure they will have
different hours. She will do all kinds of little things
differently. When we go over there it will be like
going to Europe. She will have a boudoir. She
will invite us to dinner—very late. She will break-
fast in her room."
Charlotte gazed at her sister again. Gertrude's
imagination seemed to her to be fairly running riot.
She had always known that Gertrude had a great
deal of imagination—she had been very proud of it.
But at the same time she had always felt that it was
a dangerous and irresponsible faculty; and now, to
her sense, for the moment, it seemed to threaten to
make her sister a strange person who should come
in suddenly, as from a journey, talking of the pecu-
liar and possibly unpleasant things she had ob-
served. Charlotte's imagination took no journeys
whatever; she kept it, as it were, in her pocket, with
the other furniture of this receptacle—a thimble, a
little box of peppermint and a morsel of court-
plaster. "I don't believe she would have any dinner
—or any breakfast," said Miss Wentworth. "I don't
believe she knows how to do anything herself. I
should have to get her ever so many servants, and
she wouldn't like them."