She chatted away as she tripped from dairy to larder; it was a rare holiday for the lonely girl to find a companion, and a companion of her own age.  Two long years of poverty and seclusion had not dulled Audrey's gay spirits, which only waited a chance to bubble forth.  Old Madam Isham had sheltered her great niece out of family pride, not out of family affection; and Audrey had left the love and luxury of her grandfather's house to enter a life as dull and as cold as that of a nunnery.  Madam Isham considered most of her country neighbours to be either parvenus or white-washed rebels, while she was too proud to show her poverty to the few gentlefolk she considered worthy of her acquaintance.