Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/130

 to thump his sister's couch in an appreciative but somewhat subversive manner.

'Oh, I have no doubt whatever!' Lady Aurora exclaimed, quickly. 'Mrs. Major must have so very much to do.'

'Not in the making-up of beds, I'm afraid; there are only two or three, down there, for so many,' Paul Muniment remarked loudly, and with a kind of incongruous cheerfulness.

'Yes, I have thought a great deal about that. But there wouldn't be room for more, you know,' said Lady Aurora, this time in a very serious tone.

'There's not much room for a family of that sort anywhere—thirteen people of all ages and sizes,' the young man rejoined. 'The world's pretty big, but there doesn't seem room.'

'We are also thirteen at home,' said Lady Aurora, laughing again. 'We are also rather crowded.'

'Surely you don't mean at Inglefield?' Rosy inquired eagerly, in her dusky nook.

'I don't know about Inglefield. I am so much in town.' Hyacinth could see that Inglefield was a subject she wished to turn off, and to do so she added, 'We too are of all ages and sizes.'

'Well, it's fortunate you are not all your size!' Paul Muniment exclaimed, with a freedom at which Hyacinth was rather shocked, and which led him to suspect that, though his new friend was a very fine fellow, a delicate tact was not his main characteristic. Later he explained this by the fact that he was rural and provincial, and had not had, like himself, the benefit of metropolitan culture; and