beauty of spring. Gilbert, with the courtesy that Albinia's very
presence had infused into him, gathered a pretty wild bouquet for
each, and Albinia talked of cowslip-balls, and found that neither
Gilbert nor Genevieve had ever seen one; then she pitied them, and
owned that she did not know how to get through a spring without one;
and Gilbert having of course a pocketful of string, a delicious ball
was constructed, over which Genevieve went into an inexpressible
ecstasy.

All the evening, Gilbert devoted himself to Genevieve, though more
than one of the others tried to attract him, playing off the follies
of more advanced girlhood, to the vexation of Albinia, who could not
bear to see him the centre of attention to silly girls, when he ought
to have been finding his level among boys.

'Gilbert makes himself so ridiculous about Jenny Durant,' said his
sisters, when he insisted on escorting her home, and thus they
brought on themselves Albinia's pent-up indignation at their usage of
their guest. Lucy argued in unsatisfactory self-defence, but Sophy,
when shown how ungenerous her conduct had been, crimsoned deeply, and
though uttering no word of apology, wore a look that gave her step-mother
for the first time a hope that her sullenness might not be so much
from want of compunction, as from want of power to express it.

Oh! for a consultation with her brother. But he and his wife were
taking a holiday among their kindred in Ireland, and for once Albinia
could have echoed the aunts' lamentation that Winifred had so many
relations!