MAUD DANVERS
There were only three or four stations between Chailfield and Seabourne,
and they followed so closely on one another that in rather less than half
an hour the train ran into the big station of Seabourne.
"Any luggage, Miss, cab, or outside porter, please," said a porter,
opening the door of the carriage.
"One trunk and a hat-box, and I will have a cab, please," Margaret
answered.
She was rather surprised and pleased at her own self-possession, as led
by the porter she threaded her way up the crowded platform. And when he
paused to ask her what name he should look for on the trunk she gave
Eleanor's as calmly as though she had been known by it all her life. It
had not occurred to Margaret that any one might come to the station to
meet her, or, rather, to meet the girl whose identity she had taken on
herself, consequently she gave a startled jump, when, as she stood on the
edge of the press of people round the luggage van, a tap fell smartly on
her shoulder, and turning, she found herself confronted by a merry,
sunburnt girl of about her own age.
"Miss Carson, isn't it?" the latter sang out in a clear, rather pleasant
voice, that could be distinctly heard above the noise and confusion
surrounding them. "Oh, don't look so astonished! I heard you tell the
porter the name on your luggage, and I tracked you up the platform. Let
me introduce myself. I am Maud Danvers, and I hope you've had a nice
journey and all that. I say, you're taking a cab, aren't you? That's all
right. Get in to one when you've collected all your belongings, will you,
and wait for me, and I'll drive up with you. I shan't be long, but I have
just got to go and finish a conversation that I am in the middle of."
And with a careless little nod Miss Maud Danvers turned and went off up
the platform. But casual though her greeting had been, it had served to
dispel the slight feeling of loneliness that had been creeping over
Margaret. How exceedingly kind of that nice girl to have come and met
her! And in what a delightfully frank and friendly manner she had
accosted her! Margaret felt instantly sure that she was going to like
Maud Danvers very much indeed, and it was with a little glow of pleasure
that she reflected that she was going to live in the same house with her
for many weeks to come. For a moment she forgot to aid the porter to look
for her box, but turning her back upon the busy crowd she followed Maud
with her eyes. Without being exactly pretty, Maud Danvers was an
exceedingly nice-looking girl, and her fresh, clear skin no less than her
brisk step and the way she held herself, showed that she was an outdoor
girl.
She was wearing a short tweed skirt that barely reached to her ankles,
and displayed a neat pair of golfing shoes, but the skirt was so
exceedingly well hung and the fit of the Norfolk coat that matched it
so good that Margaret, unversed though she was in such matters,
instinctively recognised that Maud's clothes not only became her very
well, but had been made by a first-class tailor. Her own simply made
coat and skirt of blue serge felt suddenly very dowdy.
Meanwhile Maud had made her way along the crowded platform to a point
where two girls in Panama hats and long white blanket coats, and carrying
tennis racquets under their arms, were standing together, and as soon as
she reached their side, they all three plunged into an eager conversation
in the interest of which it was soon evident that Margaret was forgotten.
Just, however, as Margaret's cabman was beginning to show signs of
impatience, the bicycles for which the two girls had been waiting were
extricated from the van, and with a hasty nod to Maud, they pushed their
way out of the crowd.
"The Cedars, Pelham Road, please," Maud said as she got into the cab.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Carson. But I wanted to speak to
the Finches. They had just got back from the Surbiton Tournament. They
had done awfully well both of them. The tall one, Anna's the best. Fancy,
wasn't it stupendous luck for her! She got into the third round of the
open singles and met Mrs. Lambert Chambers. Of course, she was beaten
hollow. Didn't even get a game. But wasn't it luck meeting her?"
Now, as Margaret had not the very vaguest notion who Mrs. Lambert
Chambers was, or why it should be considered such extraordinary good
fortune to meet her, she gave such a vague assent to the question that
Maud turned to stare at her with undisguised amazement in her eyes.
"You don't mean to say," she exclaimed, "that you have never even heard
of Mrs. Lambert Chambers!"
"I don't seem to remember her name," confessed Margaret, blushing
crimson.
"Why, I mean the famous Mrs. Lambert Chambers. The tennis player. Miss
Douglas that was, you know."
"Oh!" said poor Margaret again. Then she added lamely, "I--I suppose she
must play very nicely."
"Play nicely!" ejaculated Maud, still surveying her companion with a
direct glance that the latter found very embarrassing. "Great Scott, what
a funny way of putting it! Where on earth were you brought up! And never
even to have heard of her! Why, you will be saying next that you never
heard of C. B. Fry or Braid, or Grace, or the Dohertys."
But Margaret, in the face of the scorn she already provoked, was not
disposed to confess to such depths of ignorance, and she murmured a vague
reply that might have meant anything. However, the few unintelligible
sounds that passed her lips might not have been sufficient to save her
from further cross examination on the subject of her knowledge of tennis
had not Maud's attention been attracted by the same two girls who,
speeding past on their bicycles, called out to her not to forget
to-morrow.
"Right oh!" sang out Maud in reply. "I shall expect you 11.30 sharp."
"How beautifully they bicycle!" Margaret said in admiring accents,
following the two girls with eyes as they threaded their way through the
traffic.
"Oh, well, any one can do that, can't they?" Maud replied. "Did you bring
yours? You'd find it useful. I say, what was your hockey eleven like?"
"What was our hockey eleven like?" faltered Margaret. "I--I forget."
"Forget!" Maud exclaimed, in fresh amazement. "How could you forget an
important thing like that? Why, nowadays if a school can't put a decent
hockey eleven in the field it does not count for much."
"I mean," said Margaret, as a timely recollection of what Eleanor had
told her about the games at Waterloo House came to her mind, "Miss
McDonald was very old-fashioned, and she did not at all approve of the
modern fashion of girls playing boys games."
"Great Scott!" said Maud in tones of intense commiseration. "Fancy being
a governess in a rotten school of that sort! I wonder you stayed. Then
you didn't play cricket?"
"No."
"Tennis?"
"No. But," added Margaret rather timidly, for it distressed her to see to
what depths she was sinking in Maud's estimation, "I have always thought
I should like to learn lawn tennis very much. Perhaps you could teach
me."
"Me?" said Maud, raising her eyebrows in a quizzical fashion and gazing
at Margaret with the point blank stare, which the latter found so trying
to encounter with equanimity. "Sorry, but I haven't the time. I daresay
one of the kids would give you a game, though, some time."
"As if," she said afterwards, detailing this conversation with much
laughter to one of her brothers, "tennis could be taught in a day, or as
though I were going to bother to teach her either. And I fancied I saw
myself playing with a girl who had never held a racquet in her hand
before."
"By the way," Maud went on, "I don't suppose you have much idea at
present what our family consists of, have you?"
"No, I have not," said Margaret, feeling that she was quite safe in
making that admission, for Eleanor had not known either.
"Well, there's mother, of course, to start with, and then, of the ones
who are at home, there's Geoffrey; he's a year older than me, and he's at
Sandhurst. Like me, he's fearfully keen on games, and like me too, he's
pretty good," added Maud, who, as Margaret had discovered by that time,
was not lacking in a good opinion of herself. "Then I come, then
Hilary--she's a year younger than me. Then come Jack and Noel--they're
fifteen and sixteen respectively, and one's at Osborne and one's at
Dartmouth; all they seem to care about at present is sailing and
fishing, and so we don't see much of them. Then there's Edward, he's
about fourteen, I think; he's mad keen on cricket--besides, he's got all
the brains of the family. Then two cousins of ours, Nancy and Joan Green,
are staying with us. They're not half bad girls, and Nancy would play
quite a decent game of tennis if she wasn't so lazy. She can hit jolly
hard, but she won't run, and she will talk, so I won't play with her.
Then there are the kids--your little lot, you know--and I wish you joy of
them; they're a jolly handful, and no mistake."
Margaret, who had been listening eagerly to this account of the family in
the midst of which she was to live for the next few weeks, puckered her
forehead over the last sentences.
"The--the kids," she queried in a puzzled tone.
"Yes, the infants; my eldest sister Joanna's children. You are going
to take them over and teach them, aren't you? At least, that is what
I believe mother gave me to understand."
"Oh yes, of course," Margaret said, so quickly that Maud had no suspicion
that she had never in all her life before heard children called kids.
"Yes, mother hopes great things from you," Maud chattered on. "She says
as you have been in a school you will understand discipline and all that.
But I believe Joanna won't have her darlings smacked, and they are such
troublesome little monkeys that a sound smacking would do them all the
good in the world," wound up their young aunt with a vigour that showed
the subject was one on which she felt strongly. "Not that you," with a
careless glance at Margaret's pale, thoughtful face, "look strong enough
to give them much of a whacking."
Margaret made no reply, simply because at the moment she felt absolutely
incapable of speech. Dismay at the thought that she was to be a governess
held her spellbound. She certainly had not gathered from anything that
Eleanor had said that she was expected to teach, and two naughty unruly
children into the bargain. No wonder that she grew paler even than her
wont at the appalling thought. Luckily for her, however, Maud was far
from guessing the dismay her casually given information was causing her
silent companion, and under cover of her chatter, Margaret had time to
recover a little from the shock she had received and to resolve to try
and make the best of it. Of one thing she was sure, Eleanor herself had
no idea of the services she had been expected to give in exchange for
being asked to spend her holidays at The Cedars. Neither had Mrs. Danvers
wished to get her there under false pretences. After all, had not her
letter said that she was both to enjoy herself and to make herself
useful. So she had no right to complain at the discovery that the latter
half of the sentence meant so much more than either she or Eleanor had
suspected. "To make yourself useful," Eleanor had said airily; "oh, that
means that you will be expected to arrange flowers for the dinner table,
and to write notes, and so on. Little things of that sort, you know."
So, naturally, it had been a great shock to discover that "little things
of that sort" included the entire control of two unruly children. It was
not the prospect of having to work that perturbed Margaret, it was the
knowledge of how incapable she felt to deal with children. Why, she had
scarcely ever spoken to a child in her life, and now she was to have the
entire charge of two thrust upon her. She could not help wondering what
Eleanor would have said or done in her place, but was unable to answer
the question satisfactorily. The situation, however, could hardly have
dismayed her as much as it was dismaying her substitute. To fill the post
of holiday governess to two small children would seem to her an easy task
after having taught for three years in a big school. Of one thing,
however, Margaret felt quite convinced. If Eleanor had known of the
predicament in which Margaret was placed, she would, after a moment or
two of consternation, have gone off into fits of laughter. And no doubt
the situation had its comic side; even Margaret, full of alarm as she
was, could not restrain a smile as she thought of the very queer
governess that she would make.
"You look pretty young to be a governess, don't you?" said Maud. "Did you
ever have any difficulty in keeping order?"
"No, never," said Margaret, truthfully enough.
"How many girls were there?"
"Twenty boarders, forty day girls, and five governesses when I--when
I----" this came out with a gulp, for Margaret found the first falsehood
she had been obliged to tell most distasteful to her--"went there. But
the school has been going down the last few years, and last term there
were only seven boarders and ten day girls."
"Sounds rather a poor sort of show, doesn't it?" said Maud with a yawn.
"I say, what a slow horse we have got, haven't we? We shall be all night
getting home at this rate. What sort of place was Putney or Hampstead, or
wherever the school was to live in?"
"Miss McDonald's school was at Hampstead, which is a suburb of London and
is situated high up. It is celebrated for its Heath, which is a great
holiday resort for the lower orders--the 'Arrys and 'Arriets, you
know--on Bank Holidays, at which time it is advisable for quieter members
of society to keep off it. But at other times it affords an excellent
exercise ground for all the young ladies' schools in the neighbourhood.
The air is fine and invigorating, and there is no reason why, with the
help of a little imagination, one should not fancy oneself in the heart
of the country, and many miles away from the greatest metropolis in the
world. The sunsets can, by those who appreciate the beauties of Nature,
be viewed from that portion of the Heath which commands a view of the
western sky, and----"
"Very interesting indeed," broke in Maud, who had been listening with
astonishment to this flow of instructive discourse.
At first she had thought that Margaret was, to use her own phrase,
"rotting her," but a glance at the serious face beside her was sufficient
to dispel that theory, and she came to the conclusion that young though
she was, Margaret was a typical governess, who rejoiced in framing
stilted sentences and in letting them flow from her lips in an even,
monotonous voice.
"You speak like a well-informed guide-book," she added, with another
yawn.
Margaret took the semi-impertinent remark as a compliment.
"I can tell you a great deal more than that about Hampstead if you would
like to listen," she said, for her wonderfully accurate memory had
enabled her to retain every word of the banteringly given description
of Hampstead with which Eleanor had furnished her. Needless to say,
Eleanor had had no idea that Margaret would think it necessary to repeat
it word for word, but had thought that Margaret would only pick out facts
here and there to help her in any emergency that might arise.
"Not on any account, thanks," said Maud hastily; "let's talk about
something more interesting."
"Something more interesting" proved to be her own self, and from that
point onwards until they reached their destination Maud talked
exclusively of her own doings. And as she appeared to do little else but
play games, and as Margaret's knowledge of all games was "nil," it
followed that very much of what Maud said was as unintelligible as though
she had talked Chinese. But though she never knew when Maud was talking
of golf, or when of tennis, or again, when hockey was under discussion,
so that handicaps, and sliced balls, and American services, and good
forearm drives, and double faults, and poor passing, and good shooting,
and half-volleys, were terms that were all jumbled up in absolutely
inextricable confusion, her expression of rapt attention as she jotted
them down on the tablets of her mind, resolving to acquaint herself with
the meaning of each when occasion served, convinced Maud that she had a
properly appreciative listener. A person even more ignorant of games than
Margaret would have gathered from all she said about them that Maud
excelled in each and all.
And that was no vain boast either. Her golf handicap was four; she played
an exceedingly good, hard game at tennis, and had twice played hockey in
International matches. But it was of billiards she was talking during the
last few minutes of their drive. It appeared from what she said that she
had promised to play a game with Geoffrey immediately after dinner, but
that she had not only broken that promise but had been obliged to come
away in the middle of dinner to meet the train.
"Oh, I am so sorry to have caused you this inconvenience," said Margaret.
"But it was most kind of you to come and meet me."
"Oh, I didn't come down to meet you," said Maud, with perfect frankness.
"I wanted to hear how Anna had got on at Surbiton. Then I luckily
remembered that you were coming by this train, and so got a lift home
in your cab, and killed two birds with one stone."
The little laugh with which Maud accompanied this candid explanation of
her presence at the station robbed her words of much of their sting, yet
Margaret was conscious of a feeling of mortification that Maud's errand
had not been undertaken solely on her behalf. Indeed, she had been given
to understand that she was by far the smaller and the least important of
the two bird's that Maud's stone had brought down; and the knowledge made
her feel very forlorn indeed. Up to that moment she had been under the
impression that Maud had been anxious to meet her and make her
acquaintance. Well, if not hers, that of the girl she represented, and
the casually given information that it was only because she happened to
travel by the same train as the Finches that she had been at the station
to greet her quite took away the pleasant feeling she had had that there
was at least one person in the big, strange household she was entering
who was eager to show herself kindly disposed towards the new holiday
governess.
They had long ago left the neighbourhood of the town behind them, and
had been driving through the deepening dusk towards the downs, which,
looking in that dim light like a high green wall, run inland from the
sea. Most of the roads hereabouts were wide and bordered by trees, and
on either side houses which had for the most part large gardens
surrounding them lay back from the road. Even Margaret, unversed as she
was in the knowledge of what made the difference between a good and bad
neighbourhood in the town, could perceive that the further they went the
more prosperous and consequential looking the houses became.
At last, when they were almost underneath the downs, the long, straight
road they had been following for some time turned abruptly to the right,
and going through a white gate they entered a long drive lined on either
side with a hedge of evergreens close clipped and of great thickness.
Here and there openings like doorways had been cut in the hedge, but it
was now too dark to see what lay beyond them.
Almost before the cab had time to draw up before the lighted doorway,
Maud had jumped out.
"Here we are at last," she said, with a big sigh of relief, "and here you
are, Martin," as a portly looking butler came forward. "That's all right.
Thanks ever so for the lift, Miss Carson. You'll excuse me now, won't
you, though. I expect Geoffrey is tearing his hair in the billiard-room."
And with that Maud vanished at top speed, and Margaret was left to
Martin's guidance. Though Maud's sudden desertion came as an unwelcome
surprise to her, Margaret was too tired by this time even to feel shy,
and she followed Martin through the hall without any inward tremors of
nervousness.
"Miss Carson, Madam," he said, throwing open a door at the far end of the
big, square hall they had traversed, and ushering her into a drawing-room
whose open French windows gave on to the lawn. The only light in the
room, and that was not very much, came from outside, and in the
semi-darkness Margaret could just make out a figure seated in a low
easy chair partly in and partly out of the window.
A gentle snore was the only reply to the butler's announcement, and
Margaret was conscious of a quick fear lest he might retire and leave her
with her sleeping hostess.
But Martin was evidently acquainted with his mistress's habits, and he
advanced slowly up the long room repeating "Miss Carson, Madam," and
coughing gently behind his hand at intervals until he had reached her
side.
Then she awoke.
And once awake she gave Margaret a very cordial greeting.
"My dear," she said, extending her hand but not offering to rise from her
chair, "I am very pleased to see you. Turn up the lights, Martin; I was
asleep when you came. But I was not snoring, was I? The boys and Maud
accuse me of that, I know. The nap every evening after dinner I do not
deny, but the snoring I do deny most emphatically. Just reassure me my
dear, by telling me that I was not snoring."
"It was a very gentle, quiet snore," said Margaret politely.
Mrs. Danvers broke into a soft, chuckling laugh which was as pleasant and
amiable as her voice, and Martin having now turned on the light Margaret
saw that her hostess's face and appearance matched her voice and laugh.
She was a stout, not to say exceedingly stout, middle-aged woman, with a
round, rosy face, on every line of which good-temper, combined with an
easy, indolent disposition, were expressed.
"Excuse my getting up, my dear," she said, "but truth to say, I do not
get up as easily as I could wish. 'J'y suis, j'y reste,' ought to be,
though it is not, my family motto. And so you missed your train. Very
trying to miss trains, is it not? And you must be tired, my dear. I hope
Maud saw that you had enough to eat, and that you like your room."
"Miss Carson has only this minute arrived, Madam," interposed Martin from
the door. "And Miss Maud directed me to take her straight to you."
"And you have had nothing to eat since you arrived!" Mrs. Danvers
exclaimed in a horrified tone. "Why, my dear, you must be starving! Come
with me to the dining-room at once."
She got slowly up out of her capacious chair as she spoke, and as she did
so a piece of knitting slid from her lap to the floor, while a big ball
of worsted rolled away under the nearest sofa. Margaret first picked up
the knitting and then pursued the ball and restored both to their owner,
an action which, although she did not know it at the time, she was
destined to perform very often for Mrs. Danvers, for that lady was very
rarely unaccompanied by a piece of knitting, which she invariably dropped
when she rose; to knit, she said, soothed the nerves, and gave an added
pleasure to conversation. Reading she was not fond of, and scarcely ever
opened a book or a newspaper, but she would knit and talk, chiefly about
her children, for hours at a stretch. When her knitting had been restored
to her now, and half a row of stitches dropped in the fall picked up, she
led the way into the dining-room. She was kindness and hospitality
itself, but though her incessant flow of talk obviated all necessity
for Margaret to contribute more than the merest monosyllables, the strain
of listening and being ready to say Yes or No in the right places
fatigued Margaret so greatly that by the end of the meal her brain was in
a whirl, and if Mrs. Danvers had put to her one-tenth of the questions to
which Eleanor had supplied ready-made answers, her replies would have
been so extraordinarily muddled up that the deception the two girls were
practising would have been found out at once.
But Mrs. Danvers, like her daughter Maud, was far more interested in her
own concerns than in those of any one with whom she might come in
contact.
But her conversation did differ from Maud's in that it was not of herself
she mainly spoke. It was evident, even to Margaret's tired brain, that
Mrs. Danver's whole being was wrapped up in her children. She would talk
about them and praise them literally by the hour together, and Margaret
was given to understand that there never were such manly, clever boys as
her sons, or such charming girls as her daughters. If Geoffrey did not
eventually rise to be Commander-in-Chief, and if Noel and Jack did not
become Admirals of the Fleet, it would not be their fault. On the other
hand, Edward's brains would get him into Parliament, and there was no
reason at all why he should not be Prime Minister one day. As for Maud,
there was simply nothing she could not do in the way of games Daisy and
David were dear children, too, if taken in the right way, and not unduly
thwarted. Daisy and David Margaret concluded, were the two grandchildren
to whom she was to fill the position of holiday governess and she
thought to herself ruefully enough, as Mrs. Danvers went on to say what
high-spirited children they were, that she was quite sure she would never
have the courage to thwart them however naughty they were.
When Margaret could eat no more, and indeed she had finished her supper
long before Mrs. Danvers became aware of the fact, the latter suggested
that if Miss Carson had really had enough they should go into the
billiard-room and watch the game that was in progress there. She had
already been told that Maud was playing a level game with Geoffrey. They
had started the game before dinner, and Maud had been 120 to his 80 odd
when the gong brought play to a standstill. She had made four breaks of
10, two of 12, and one of 15, and though every word of this was Greek to
Margaret, she gathered from the air of pride with which Mrs. Danvers
spoke that it was all greatly to Maud's credit.
So when Mrs. Danvers' knitting had been picked up from the floor, and the
ball, which had rolled under the dining-room table this time, retrieved,
Margaret followed her hostess out of the room.
A tremendous clapping and cheering, and the noisy stamping of cues on the
ground, fell on Margaret's ears as Mrs. Danvers threw open the door of
the billiard-room, and it did not cease until they had both been some
minutes in the room.
To Margaret's dazed, shy eyes the room seemed full of young people,
although as a matter of fact there were only one or two friends of the
Danvers present, the rest of the group of young people being the Danvers
themselves. Maud, of course, was still in the tweed skirt in which she
had gone to the station, but the other girls were in pretty white evening
frocks, and the bigger boys were in dinner jackets, and the smaller ones
in Etons. Maud was perched on the edge of the billiard-table with one
foot on the ground and the other swinging to and fro, and it was evident
both from her pleased, self-conscious air and the fact that she was the
only person in the room who was not clapping, that all the applause was
meant for her.
"Yes, I have beaten him handsomely, Mumsy," she said, when at length Mrs.
Danvers could make her voice heard. "It was a close thing though. Fancy
Geoffrey was 193, and he must needs go and miss one of the easiest shots
you ever saw, and then I ran out with a break of 22."
"Fancy that!" Mrs. Danvers said, turning to Margaret with a proud,
beaming face. "Maud ran out with a break of 22."
Then a momentary silence fell in the room, and everybody present
seemingly became aware for the first time that there was a stranger among
them. She coloured up nervously, and then feeling it incumbent upon her
to say something, for, or so at least it seemed to her, every one seemed
waiting for her to speak, she stammered out nervously, addressing Maud:--
"I hope you did not hurt yourself."
"Hurt myself--how?" said Maud, in wide-eyed surprise.
"By running out and breaking yourself; or," becoming miserably aware,
from the expressions on everybody's faces that she had said something
incredibly foolish, "was it your stick that you broke?"
An audible titter ran round the room, and as Margaret stood there, the
focus of all eyes, the titter changed to literal shouts and shrieks of
laughter. The boys doubled themselves up into knots, the girls staggered
helplessly about, and Mrs. Danvers just sank into the nearest chair and
laughed until the tears ran down her face. The room fairly rang with
their laughter, and in the middle of them all Margaret stood alone with
crimson cheeks, and eyes to which the tears had begun to start.
But no one had the slightest pity for her cruel mortification; only now
and then one or other of them would glance from her to Maud and go off
into fresh shrieks.
At last Margaret could stand her position no longer, but crying out in
a high, choking voice, that was plainly heard even above the din that
prevailed: "Oh I hate you all! I hate you all!" she dashed from the room,
and ran, still with the sound of their laughter behind her, down the
passage which led to the billiard-room into the hall. Even at that
distance she could hear the shouts and yells of laughter, which seemed to
be increasing rather than diminishing, for if there was an unusual lull
in the noise, some one would ask Maud if her run had broken her or her
stick, and that would be sufficient to start them all off again.
The noise they all made even at that distance was tremendous, but The
Cedars was evidently a house to which uproarious mirth was no novelty,
for Martin, by whom Margaret had brushed in her hasty flight from the
billiard-room, exhibited no signs of surprise at the sound of it.
In the hall, simply because she did not know where to go next, Margaret
came to a pause in her headlong flight, and, sinking on to a chair,
covered her face with her hands. Even though the length of the whole
house separated her now from the billiard-room, she had not escaped from
the sound of the shouts and squeals to which her remarks had given rise,
for fresh peals were still ringing out with unabated force.
"Oh, will they ever stop laughing at me!" Margaret said half-aloud, in
a tone that was fraught with extreme misery. "Oh, how I wish I had never
come here! And I had been so looking forward to being friends with girls
and boys of my own age. Oh, how shall I bear it if they go on laughing at
me for days and days!"
"Oh, but they won't go on for as long as that, no matter how good the
joke. They'll have a dozen fresh jokes by this time to-morrow, and this
one will be forgotten. Unless, of course, it was an extra good one. By
the way, what was the joke? You are Miss Carson, aren't you? I am Nancy
Green. Take a chocolate and tell me all about it."
Margaret, who had believed herself to be alone, turned in surprise as
this unexpected voice fell on her ears, and glanced about her in a
startled fashion until, in a cosy nook close to her and half hidden by a
tall palm and a screen, she saw a big Chesterfield couch on which a girl
was stretched full length, with a book in one hand and a box of
chocolates in the other.
"I do not exactly know what is making them laugh," Margaret said,
declining the chocolates with an unhappy shake of her head. "They were
playing billiards, and Miss Danvers said she had run away and broken
something, and I hoped she was not hurt, and then they all began to
laugh, and have not stopped yet," she added resentfully, as a fresh peal
of laughter reached her ears. "And you are laughing, too," she said,
glancing at Nancy's twitching lips.
"Only a very little," Nancy said hastily, "and it was rather a funny
mistake you made, you know. I will try and explain. You see, a break in
billiards does not mean a fall; it means that you go on scoring."
"Oh!" said Margaret, in the same dejected accents, and not feeling at all
enlightened, "and what does going on scoring mean?"
"Why, that it is still your turn to play, of course," said Nancy, and her
tone was so surprised that Margaret thought it wiser to ask no more
questions in case she displayed an ignorance so great as to rouse
suspicion as to where she could have been brought up.
"I wish they would stop laughing at me," she said miserably.
"Why! Do you mind being laughed at so much as all that," Nancy said. "I
should have thought that as a governess in a school you would have got
used to it. For schoolgirls are awful quizzes. Perhaps, though, as you
were a governess they did it behind your back."
"They certainly did not do it to my face," Margaret said.
"Oh, well, they will here," said Nancy. "Everybody chaffs everybody else
in this house pretty freely. What you must do is to chaff back; but if
you don't feel equal to that just at first, just grin, and let them think
you don't care a rap."
At that moment heavy footsteps were heard in the passage and Mrs. Danvers
came into the hall.
"Ah, here you are, Miss Carson. I could not think where you had got to.
I just stopped to tell my shameless young folk what I thought of them for
laughing like that at a stranger. Nancy, you lazy girl, you ought to have
been watching the match instead of lying here. It was a close thing. Maud
won. Really she has a wonderful eye. There is simply no game she cannot
excel in if she chose. She----" But then Mrs. Danvers catching sight of
Margaret's miserable expression pulled herself up short just as she had
been about to launch forth into a glowing account of her daughter's
skill. "But all the same, it was shameful of them to laugh at you like
that, Miss Carson. Your first night too, when you are not used to them."
"Just what I said, Aunt Mary," chimed in Nancy, who had seen that Mrs.
Danvers casual treatment of the incident which had brought such
mortification to the new governess was making the latter feel still
more lost and ill at ease. "She'll soon get used to it though, and will
care just as little as anybody when her turn comes to be rotted."
"And above all things keep your temper, my dear," said Mrs. Danvers.
"But that remark," she added hastily, seeing that Margaret looked more
miserable even than before, "is not intended as a reproof, for the way
they went on was enough to make any one lose their temper, but as a
friendly warning. They'll tease you unmercifully if they find you lose
your temper, and I shan't be able to stop it. And now, my dear, unless
you like to come back to the billiard-room and show them that you don't
care a rap for their laughter, I'll take you to your room. Which would
you like to do?"
"Oh, go to my room, please," said Margaret hastily, who felt that on no
account would she face any one of the Danvers' family again that night.
"Did you lose your temper?" inquired Nancy. "Then I'm jolly glad to hear
it. Listen to the wretches laughing still. So many to one wasn't fair.
I hope you gave it to them hot. They deserved it."
"So they did," said Mrs. Danvers heartily, and Margaret, who had yet to
learn Mrs. Danvers always sided with the last speaker, took courage from
that remark. It showed at all events, she thought, that her sudden
passionate outburst had not caused Mrs. Danvers to take a dislike to her.
"I have put you in the big spare room," Mrs. Danvers said, as with
Margaret following in her wake she led the way slowly upstairs. "Nancy
and Joan have the other spare rooms, and I was really keeping this for an
old aunt of mine, who may come later. If she does come while you are
here, you won't mind turning out for her, will you, and going into the
dressing-room opening out of this? There is a bed in it, and really it is
quite a fair-sized little room; but I thought as this was empty I should
like you to have it for the time being anyway. A nice room, isn't it?"
Mrs. Danvers was so evidently well pleased with herself for having given
a mere holiday governess the best bedroom in her house that Margaret
hastened to admire it.
It was indeed a luxuriously furnished room, perfect in all its
appointments, and its handsome solid old mahogany furniture looked well
against the dull blue Axminster carpet and the blue silk hangings of
the big double bed. The walls were blue also.
"Yes, I think you will be comfortable," Mrs. Danvers said, glancing
round. "You see there is a sofa and an armchair and a writing-table, so
that if at any time you want to get away from the noisy young folk
downstairs you have got a nice retreat to come to. They have unstrapped
your trunk I see; but as Collins, the head housemaid, is out to-night,
your unpacking has not been done for you."
"Oh, but thank you very much, I can do that myself," said Margaret
hastily, wondering within herself as she spoke what would have happened
supposing Collins had not been out, and had insisted upon unpacking her
things, and had seen that all her linen was marked with a name quite
different to the one she had come in. The thought of the danger she had
escaped made her turn quite pale. This sudden pallor was not lost upon
Mrs. Danvers who, attributed it, not unnaturally, to extreme fatigue,
and who thereupon hastened her own departure from the room, with a kindly
expressed wish as she left, that Margaret would sleep well.
But tired though Margaret was, she felt that she could not go to bed
until she had removed her own name from every article of her underlinen,
and so having unpacked her trunk she took a pair of scissors and set to
work. Fortunately for her purpose, her things had not been marked in ink
but with tapes bearing her name in woven letters, and these she carefully
ripped off one by one, and making a little pile of them burned them all
in the grate. Then, if any maid saw them before Margaret had time to
remark them with the ink and tapes that she meant to buy, the most she
would feel would be a mild wonder that any young lady having such nice
undergarments as Miss Carson had, should risk losing them at the wash by
having no name upon them.