Ernest noticed throughout his mother's illness, that Charlotte
found immediate occasion to make herself disagreeable to him whenever
either doctor or nurse pronounced her mother to be a little better. When
she wrote to Crampsford to desire the prayers of the congregation (she
was sure her mother would wish it, and that the Crampsford people would
be pleased at her remembrance of them), she was sending another letter on
some quite different subject at the same time, and put the two letters
into the wrong envelopes. Ernest was asked to take these letters to the
village post-office, and imprudently did so; when the error came to be
discovered Christina happened to have rallied a little. Charlotte flew
at Ernest immediately, and laid all the blame of the blunder upon his
shoulders.
Except that Joey and Charlotte were more fully developed, the house and
its inmates, organic and inorganic, were little changed since Ernest had
last seen them. The furniture and the ornaments on the chimney-piece
were just as they had been ever since he could remember anything at all.
In the drawing-room, on either side of the fireplace there hung the Carlo
Dolci and the Sassoferrato as in old times; there was the water colour of
a scene on the Lago Maggiore, copied by Charlotte from an original lent
her by her drawing master, and finished under his direction.
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