|Colin,' Minna Wroe said to the young workman one evening, as they
walked together through the streets of London towards the Regent's Park:
'do you know what I've actually gone and done to-day? I've give notice.'
'Given notice, Minna! What for, on earth? Why, you seemed to me so happy
and comfortable there. I've never seen you in any other place where you
and your people seemed to pull so well together, like.'
'Ah, that's just what she said to me, Colin.' (_She_ in this connection
may be familiarly recognised as a pronoun enclosing its own antecedent.)
'She said she couldn't imagine what my reason could be for leaving; and
so I just up and told her. And as it isn't any use keeping it from you
any longer, I think I may as well up and tell you too, Colin. Colin, I
don't mean any more to be a servant.'
Cohn looked at her, dazzled and stunned a little by the suddenness
and conciseness of this resolute announcement. Half a dozen vague and
unpleasant surmises ran quickly through his bewildered brain. 'Why,
Minna,' he exclaimed with some apprehension, looking down hastily at
her neat little figure and her pretty, dimpled gipsy face, 'you're not
going--no you're not going to the drapery, are you?'
Minna's twin dimples on the rich brown cheeks grew deeper and deeper,
and she laughed merrily to herself a wee musical ringing laugh.
'The drapery, indeed,' she cried, three-quarters amused and one-quarter
indignant. 'The drapery, he says to me! No, Mr. Colin, if you please,
sir, I'm not going to be a shop-girl, thank you. A pretty shop-girl I
should make now, shouldn't I? That's just like all you men: you think
nobody can go in for bettering themselves, only yourselves. If a
girl doesn't want to be a parlour-maid any longer, you can't think of
anything but she must want to go and be a shop-girl. I wonder you didn't
say a barmaid. If you don't beg my pardon at once for your impudence, I
won't tell you anything more about it.'
'I beg your pardon, I'm sure, Minna,' Colin answered submissively. 'I
didn't mean to hurt your feelings.'
'And good reason, too, sir. But as you've got the grace to do it, I'll
tell you all the rest. Do you know what I do with my money, Colin?'
'You save it all, I know, Minna.'
'Well, I save it all. And then, I've got grandmother's eleven pound,
what she left me; and the little things I've been given now and again by
visitors and such like. And I've worked all through the “Complete Manual
of Letter Writing,” and the “English History,” and the “First School
Arithmetic “: and now, Miss Woollacott--_you_ know; her at the North
London Birkbeck Girls' Schools--she says she'll take me on as a sort of
a pupil-teacher, to look after the little ones and have lessons myself
for what I can do, if only I'll pay her my own board and lodging.'
Colin gazed at the girl aghast. 'A pupil-teacher, Minna!' he cried in
astonishment. 'A pupil-teacher! Why, my dear child, what on earth do you
mean to do when you're through it all?'
Minna dropped her plump brown hand from his arm at the gate of the park,
and stood looking up at him pettishly with bright eyes flashing. 'There
you are again,' she said, with a little touch of bitterness in her
pretty voice. 'Just like you men always. You think it's all very well
for Colin Churchill to want to go and be a sculptor, and talk with
fine ladies and gentlemen, and make his fortune, and become a great man
by-and-by, perhaps, like that Can-over, or somebody: that's all quite
right and proper; of course it is. But for Minna Wroe, whose people
are every bit as good as his, to save up her money, and do her best
to educate herself, and fit herself to be his equal, and become a
governess,--why, that of course is quite unnatural. _Her_ proper place
is to be a parlour-maid: _she_ ought to go on all her life long cleaning
silver, and waiting on the ladies and gentlemen, and changing the plates
at dinner--that's just about what she's fit for. She's only a woman.
You're all alike, Colin, all you men, the whole lot of you. I won't go
any further. I shall just go home again this very minute.'
Colin caught her arm gently, and held her still for a minute by quiet
force. 'My dear Minna,' he said, 'you don't at all understand me. If
you've really got it in your mind to better yourself like that, why, of
course, it's a very grand thing in you, and I admire you for your spirit
and resolution. Besides, Minna,' and Colin looked into her eyes a little
tenderly as he said this, 'I think I know, little woman, what you want
to do it for. What I meant was just this, you know: I don't see what
it'll lead to, even when you've gone and done it.'
'Why,' Minna answered, trying to disengage herself from his firm grasp,
'in the first place,--let me go, Colin, or I won't speak to you; let me
go this minute I say; yes, that'll do, thank you--in the first place,
what I want most is to get the education. When I've got that, I can
begin to look out what to do with it. Perhaps I'll be a governess, or
a Board-school teacher, or suchlike. But in the second place, one never
knows what may happen to one. Somebody might fall in love with me, you
see, and then I should very likely get married, Colin.' And Minna said
this with such a saucy little smile, that Cohn longed then and there, in
the open park, to stoop down and kiss her soundly.
'Then you've really arranged it all, have you, Minna?' he asked
wonderingly. You've really decided to go to Miss Woollacott's?'
Minna nodded.
'Well, Minna,' Colin said in a tone of genuine admiration, 'you may say
what you like about us men being all the same (I suppose we are, if it
comes to that), but I do admire you immensely for it. You've got such a
wonderful lot of spirit and determination. Now, I know what you'll say;
you'll go and take it wrong again; but, Minna, it's a great deal harder
and more remarkable for a woman to try to raise herself than for a man
to go and do it. Why, now I come to think of it, little woman, I've
read of lots of men educating themselves and rising to be great
people--George Stephenson, that made the steam-engines on railways, and
Gibson the sculptor, and lots of painters and architects and people--but
really and truly, I believe, Minna, I never read yet of a woman who'd
been and done it.'
'That's because the books are all written by men, stupid, you may be
certain,' Minna answered saucily. 'Anyhow, Colin, I'm going to try and
do it. I'm going to leave my place at the end of the month, and go for a
pupil-teacher at Miss Woollacott's. And I'm beginning the geography now,
and the Second Grade English Grammar, so that I can get myself fit for
it, Colin, a bit beforehand. I don't see why you should be reading all
these fine books, you know, and I should be content with being no more
nor a common parlourmaid.'
It was in the park, but it was getting dusky, and lovers in London are
not so careful of secrecy as in the unsophisticated and less limited
country. The great perennial epic of each human heart must needs work
itself out somehow or other even under the Argus eyes of the big squalid
ugly city. So Colin stooped down beneath the shade of the plane trees
and kissed Minna twice or three times over in spite of her pretended
struggling. (It is a point of etiquette with girls of Minna's class that
they should pretend to struggle when one tries to kiss them.)
[Illustration: 0304]
'Minna,' he said earnestly, 'I'm proud of you. My dear little girl, I'm
really proud of you.'
'What a funny thing it is,' thought Minna to herself, 'that he never
makes love to me, though! I don't know even now whether he considers
himself engaged to me or not.
'Beneath the shade of the plane-trees.
How queer it is that he never makes me a proper proposal!' For Minna had
diligently read her 'London Herald,' and knew well that when a young man
(especially of Colin's attainments) proposes to a young lady, he ought
to do it with all due formalities, in a set speech carefully imitated
from the finest literary models of the eighteenth century. Instead of
which, Colin only kissed her now and again quite promiscuous like,
just as he used to do long since at Wootton Man-deville, and called
her 'Minna' and 'little woman.' Still she did think on the whole
that 'little woman' sounded after all a great deal like an irregular
betrothal. (She distinctly recollected that Mabel in the 'London
Herald,' and Maud de Vere in the 'Maiden's Stratagem,' always called it
a betrothal and not an engagement.)
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.