Page:Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey (1st edition), Volume 3 (Agnes Grey).djvu/244

236 "Well, I suppose they are lively, good-tempered girls; but I imagine you must know them better than I do, yourself, for I never exchanged a word with either of them."

"Indeed! They don't strike me as being particularly reserved."

"Very likely they are not so to people of their own class; but they consider themselves as moving in quite a different sphere from me!"

He made no reply to this; but after a short pause, he said,

"I suppose it's these things, Miss Grey, that make you think you could not live without a home?"

"Not exactly. The fact is I am too socially disposed to be able to live contentedly without a friend, and as the only friends I have, or am likely to have, are at home, if it—or rather, if they were gone—I will not say I could not live—but I would rather not live in such a desolate world."

"But why do you say the only friends you are likely to have? Are you so unsociable that you cannot make friends?"

"No, but I never made one yet; and in my present position there is no possibility of doing