Ida didn’t care for London, took very little interest in the shops, and none whatever in the carriage folks.  She was always pining for the fresh air, the breezy common, the green trees; and on the occasions when she could persuade Isabel to a country ramble, she walked with dreamy eyes that saw not the cut-and-dry rusticity of Woodgreen and Whetstone, but the wild dales and the broad extant of the Cumberland hills.

She was, indeed, living in the past, and it was the present that seemed a dream to her.  Of course she missed the great house, where she had ruled as mistress, her horses and her cows and dogs; but what she missed more than all else was her freedom of motion.

It was the routine, the dull, common routine, of Laburnum Villa which irked so badly.  Neither Mrs. Heron nor Isabel had any resources in themselves; they had few friends, and they were of the most commonplace, not to say vulgar type; and a “Tea” at Laburnum Villa tried Ida almost beyond endurance; for the visitors talked little else but scandal, and talked it clumsily.  Most of Isabel’s time was spent in constructing garments by the aid of paper-patterns which were given away by some periodical; admirable patterns, which, in skilful hands, no doubt, produced the most useful results; but Isabel was too stupid to avail herself of their valuable aid, and must always add something which rendered the garment outre and vulgar.

Mrs. Heron subscribed to a library, and she and Isabel read the latest six-shilling novels with avidity, stuffing them under the sofa cushion at the sound of Mr. Heron’s approaching footsteps.  They always chose the worst books, and forgot one as soon as they took up another.  Ida examined one and dropped it with disgust; for it happened to be a problem novel of the most virulent type, a novel which was selling by scores of thousands, and one which Isabel had recommended to Ida as “delicious.”

Of all the days, Ida found Sunday the worst; for on that day they went twice to a little chapel at which Mr. Heron “ministered.”  It was a tin chapel, which by its construction and position struck a chill to one’s very bones.  Here Mr. Heron ranted and growled to his heart’s content; and Ida learnt from his sanctimonious lips that only a small portion of mankind, his own sect, to wit, was bound for heaven, and that the rest of the world was doomed to another place, the horrors of which he appeared to revel in.  As she sat in the uncomfortable pew, Ida often wondered whether her cousin really believed what he preached, or whether he was a hypocrite of the first water.