MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME.
When Matthew Kelvin reached home from his journey, he was certainly
surprised at the budget of news which his mother had ready for him.
"Where's Olive?" was the first question he asked, as he sat down to
his dinner, after kissing his mother, and satisfying himself that she
was no worse in health than when he left her.
"She's gone to see the Leightons, and won't be back till to-morrow, so
that I shall have my dear boy all to myself this evening. It was very
considerate of Olive, I must say."
Mrs. Kelvin was a handsome, stately old lady, with silvery hair and
gold-rimmed spectacles. She wore a richly brocaded dress, a China
crape shawl--even in the house she always wore a shawl--and a black
lace cap of elaborate construction. To see her sitting in her easy
chair by the fire, no one would have suspected her of being an
invalid; but for many years past she had suffered from a spinal
complaint which almost entirely disabled her from walking.
"But we shall soon lose Olive now," added Mrs. Kelvin, a moment or two
later.
"Indeed! bow's that?" asked Kelvin, indifferently.
"She is going to Stammars, as governess to Lady Dudgeon's two little
girls. At her own terms, too--a hundred guineas a year."
"Well done, Olive!" cried the lawyer. "A clever girl, very; but I'm
afraid that she and Lady Dudgeon won't agree long together."
"She may perhaps have a private reason of her own for so readily
accepting Lady Dudgeon's offer. Mind, dear, I only say she may have; I
don't say she has."
Matthew Kelvin knew that it was expected of him to show some curiosity
in the matter.
"Shall I be set down as unduly inquisitive," he said, "if I ask you to
tell me what you suppose this private reason to be?"
"I think it quite possible that Olive may be willing to go to
Stammars, because--well, because Mr. Pomeroy will be there also."
Mrs. Kelvin drew her shawl round her with quite a relish, and shook
her head meaningly at her son.
"Because Mr. Pomeroy will be there also!" said Mr. Kelvin, like a man
who could hardly believe his ears. "Who says that Mr. Pomeroy is going
to Stammars?"
In the pressure of far more important matters, he had almost forgotten
the existence of an individual of so little consequence as Jack
Pomeroy.
"Why, Matthew, dear, I thought it was all arranged that as soon as you
came home, Mr. Pomeroy was to be made Sir Thomas Dudgeon's secretary,
or something of that kind; and Olive and I have advanced him fifty
pounds to provide him with an outfit. You know you told me yourself
that you didn't suppose he had a shilling in the world."
It tested all Mr. Kelvin's powers of self-control to keep down an
explosion of temper. He remembered in time that any outbreak on his
part would be sure to upset his mother and make her ill for several
days, so for a minute or two he did not speak. He put down his knife
and fork, and sipped at his claret, as if in deep thought.
"Fifty pounds is a great deal of money, mother," he said at last.
"It is a great deal of money, Matthew, of course; but Mr. Pomeroy
understands that he is to pay the amount back out of his salary."
"The whole affair seems to be cut and dried, and I have not even
spoken to Sir Thomas about the man!" he said, not without a touch of
impatience. "For anything I know to the contrary, Sir Thomas may have
filled up the situation himself, while I have been away."
"I am sorry, dear, if I have done anything against your wishes; but
really I thought I was managing everything for the best."
Matthew Kelvin could see a tear in a corner of his mother's eye, and
he could not bear that.
"There, there, mother, don't put yourself out of the way," he said.
"Fifty pounds won't ruin us, even though we should never get a penny
of it back."
"But Mr. Pomeroy was such a nice young man!" continued Mrs. Kelvin.
"So good-looking and well-educated; so gentlemanly in every way."
"Some of the most unmitigated scamps I have ever met with were very
nice young men indeed," returned Matthew. "Not that I know anything to
Pomeroy's discredit; at the same time, I know nothing very greatly to
his credit. He has been a Bohemian--a wanderer to and fro on the face
of the earth for years; and to introduce such a man, about whom, be it
remembered, I know absolutely nothing, into the household of Sir
Thomas Dudgeon, is a serious responsibility."
"Oh, I believe Olive satisfied herself thoroughly as to the
respectability of Mr. Pomeroy and his connections."
Mr. Kelvin smiled grimly at the idea of Olive Deane getting more
information about himself out of Jack Pomeroy than that individual
might be inclined to give; but, as we have already seen, Olive never
troubled herself with any such unnecessary details.
"If women would but refrain from meddling with matters that they don't
understand, what a blessing it would be!" said Kelvin to himself.
"What was that you said just now about Olive and this fellow Pomeroy?"
he asked, presently.
"Why, simply this: that I rather fancy Olive has contracted a penchant
in that quarter. Something has given me that idea, but I may be quite
mistaken."
Mr. Kelvin shrugged his shoulders.
"Of course she is old enough to choose for herself," he said, "and, as
a rule, I think Olive is quite capable of taking care of her own
interests: but if she should ever fall in love, I should like it to be
with a man that one knows something about, and not with a mere
adventurer."
"I can't help thinking that you are a little too hard on Mr. Pomeroy.
It is a long time since I was so taken with any one as I was with him.
A modest, sensible, well-informed young man I set him down as, and a
gentleman withal, or else I don't know what a gentleman is."
"I suppose we men of law see with different spectacles from anybody
else," said Matthew. "Suspicion is part of our stock-in-trade."
"I was certainly very much taken with Mr. Pomeroy," returned Mrs.
Kelvin; "but at the same time my suspicion with regard to Olive made
me interest myself more in his case than I should otherwise have
done."
Mrs. Kelvin was not a woman to readily abandon any point that she had
set her mind on carrying. Before bidding her son goodnight, she won
from him a promise that he would do his best to obtain for Mr. Pomeroy
the coveted situation.
Olive Deane was quite aware that her cousin would be greatly annoyed
when he should come to ascertain what had been done during his
absence, and she wisely left to his mother the task of telling him.
Certainly she would have been anything but satisfied--anything but
pleased--had she heard the conversation between her aunt and her
cousin. The reference to a possible liking on her part for Pomeroy
would have touched her pride to the quick. Very, very different was
the feeling at work deep down in her heart.
Mrs. Kelvin, in fact, had been altogether mistaken with regard to the
reasons which had induced Olive to accept the situation of governess
to Lady Dudgeon's children. Olive had no option but to accept it--or
felt that she had not. When Lady Dudgeon made her the offer, and when
her aunt said, "It would be a capital situation for you, and were I
you I should certainly accept it," Olive felt that she was not at
liberty to do otherwise--not at liberty to live an idle life any
longer. She had always given her aunt to understand that she was
merely taking a few weeks' rest before looking out for another
situation. Here was an excellent situation ready to her hand. How was
it possible that she should refuse it?
And yet--and yet no one but herself knew how bitter it was to her to
have to quit that roof; no one but herself knew how infinitely sweet
to her had been those few weeks of sojourn with her cousin and her
aunt! She had loved Matthew Kelvin with an undivided love from the
time when, as girl and boy, they had played together. It was a love
that had grown with her growth, and had rooted itself more firmly in
her heart with each passing year.
She was clear-sighted enough to know that never since the time of that
brief, romantic episode at Redcar, when she had had him all to herself
for a blissful fortnight, had Matthew Kelvin felt for her anything
warmer than a mere cousinly, or, at the most, a quiet, brotherly
affection. She was sufficiently versed in worldly knowledge to be
aware that the chances that she, a poor governess, neither very young
nor very handsome, should ever become the wife of her ambitious,
well-to-do cousin were about as remote as it was possible for them to
be. And yet, for all that, a dim, faint hope had always held
possession of her heart--so dim and so faint, that she herself seemed
to be hardly aware of its existence--that among the unknown chances
and changes of the future, that out of the involvement and evolution
of the great unrehearsed drama of life, with its unforeseen exits and
entrances, such a happy climax might somehow--she could not tell
how--be brought about.
She had got into the way of looking upon her cousin as a man not
likely to marry. If this view of his character struck the foundation
from her own hopes, it seemed to preclude fear from any other quarter.
When, therefore, Matthew told her the story of his love for, and
rejection by, Eleanor Lloyd, it came upon her with all the force of an
astounding revelation. Happily there seemed no likelihood of Miss
Lloyd altering her determination not to accept Mr. Kelvin; therefore,
as far as she--Olive--was concerned, she would not look upon the
campaign as entirely lost even now.
Many a husband has been won through his rejection by a rival. Men at
such times are prone to seek the first pleasant shelter that offers
itself to them. They want to lie quiet and heal them of their wounds;
and there are plenty of women in the world ready to act the part of
physician to the wounds inflicted by another, provided only that the
wounded knight will agree to wear no other gage than theirs in time to
come.
Such a physician would Olive gladly have become, rather than lose her
knight, if he would but have consented to such a method of treatment.
But Mr. Kelvin was no soft-hearted swain who thinks the world is no
longer good for anything because a certain pair of white arms refuse
to coil themselves round his neck. It is true that he had told her of
his wounds, but he had expressed no desire to be healed of them; he
had given Olive no encouragement whatever to offer herself as his
nurse. He had expressed himself very bitterly with regard to the
person who had so wounded him, and Olive had done her best to
intensify that bitterness; but that was all. She felt that she was not
one step nearer the capture of her cousin's heart than on that day,
now several weeks ago, when he had first told her of his love for Miss
Lloyd. But was that love really dead? Was it not, unknown to himself,
still smouldering in his heart, ready at the slightest provocation to
burst into a flame tenfold more ardent than before?
She felt instinctively that no other woman would ever become the wife
of Matthew Kelvin so long as Eleanor Lloyd remained unmarried; and
this feeling it was that was at the bottom of the plot for inducing
Pomeroy to make love to the latter. That dangerous rival once out of
the way for ever, Olive's ambitious scheme would not look so entirely
hopeless as it did just now.
Chagrined as Olive was at having to quit her cousin's roof with the
hidden purpose of her life no nearer its accomplishment than before,
she yet acknowledged to herself that she would much rather go to
Stammars than anywhere else. She had all a woman's curiosity to see
that other woman about whom she had been told so much, and who had
been in her thoughts, day and night, ever since she had heard the
first mention of her name. At Stammars, too, she would have an
opportunity of seeing Matthew now and then when he should come there
to visit Sir Thomas on business. Then, she would be on the spot,
ready, with deft fingers, to tie up any threads of her plot which
might be accidentally broken, or to hasten Pomeroy's footsteps along
the path she wanted him to tread, should it prove needful to do so. In
any case, she need not stay there longer than was necessary for the
carrying out of her own views. At any time she could pick a quarrel
with Lady Dudgeon, throw up her situation, and go back for a while to
the shelter of her aunt's roof.
Five days after her cousin's return, Olive Deane found herself duly
installed in her new home, and two days after that Mr. John Pomeroy
made his appearance at Stammars.
Mr. Kelvin, despite his irritation and chagrin at what had taken place
during his absence, did not fail to carry out the promise he had made
to his mother. The situation was still open, and Sir Thomas at once
promised it to Pomeroy. Then Kelvin wrote to the latter, telling him
when he would be expected at Stammars, but not in any way alluding to
the loan of fifty pounds. As a matter of course, on passing through
Pembridge, Gerald called to see Kelvin, but the lawyer was not at
home--purposely. He had done his duty by his mother, but he had no
wish to see the man who had caused him so much annoyance; he only
hoped that Pomeroy would do nothing to disgrace his recommendation.
For the present he washed his hands of him.
Mr. Kelvin had not been without his own thoughts all this time as to
the course he had taken at Olive's suggestion in keeping from Miss
Lloyd the contents of the sealed packet sent him by Miss Bellamy. He
was not usually a man whose mind vacillated with regard to any of his
intentions or purposes. "There's no shilly-shallying about Matthew,"
his mother would often say. "When he sees his point he goes straight
at it: fire and water would hardly keep him back."
But in this matter of the sealed packet he did shilly-shally
painfully, blowing hot and cold by turns, making up his mind one day
that he would tell everything, and being as stedfastly determined the
next that he would do nothing of the kind. He was not unaware of the
meanness of what he was doing; it was altogether foreign to his
notions of right and wrong, to act with anything but the strictest
honour towards his clients, rich or poor. Still, about this particular
case there was something so exceptional as to remove it out of the
ordinary category of purely professional business--that is what he
said to himself: but the real reason was that his own feelings were
more deeply interested than they had ever been before. Under such
circumstances it is by no means difficult to argue oneself into the
belief that although the action on which we are engaged may not be
positively meritorious, it is, at least, one from which no one will
suffer. "I am only doing Miss Lloyd a negative wrong," Kelvin would
sometimes say to himself. "If anything, she ought to thank me for
keeping the secret from her as long as possible." Having put off the
revelation for so long a time, he shrank more than ever from telling
her now. One morning on getting up he would swear to himself that he
had never loved Eleanor Lloyd as he loved her now: next morning he
would vow that he had never hated any human being as he hated her. He
had been rendered very wretched by Miss Lloyd's rejection of his suit;
but with all his unhappiness he had never till now lost his own sense
of self-respect: not that he would have admitted for a single moment
that he had so lost it. He made believe, even to himself, that it was
still as safely in his possession as ever it had been. But the acute
consciousness of its loss which came over him at odd times--only to be
at once thrust into the background with a firm hand--by no means
tended to mitigate the intensity of his determination to be avenged,
in one form or another, on the woman to whom he owed this strange new
feeling, which not seldom made him shrink within himself, as though he
were in reality little better than a whipped cur.
Stammars, the residence of Sir Thomas Dudgeon, was, as a family
mansion, still quite in its infancy, being something under twenty
years old. Sir Thomas had stuck to the old house as long as it was
safe for him to do so; but when, during a night of terrible storm, a
great part of it was blown about his ears, he began to see that it
would not be advisable to delay his removal much longer. So, on a
windy knoll about half a mile from the old house, the new mansion was
built. It was built with all modern conveniences and appliances. The
rooms were large and lofty, and had huge plate-glass windows with
venetian blinds. Round about were gardens, and shrubberies, and
hothouses, with a view beyond over miles of pleasant Hertfordshire
scenery. Everybody expressed themselves as being enchanted with the
house, and yet everybody felt that it lacked one essential. There was
no homelike comfort about it. Whether it was that the rooms were too
big and the fire-places too few; whether it was that the house was
built so high above the surrounding country as to be exposed to every
wind that blew, and so had never been able to get itself warmed
through; or from whatever other cause it might arise, certain it is
that Stammars never seemed otherwise than cold and comfortless. Each
room in the house seemed to have its own particular draught, while the
wind seemed to be for ever playing at hide-and-seek up and down the
great wide corridors and staircases, banging every now and then a
bedroom door, or creeping with snake-like motion under any piece of
carpet that had not been firmly nailed down.
The old mansion of Stammars had dated back for upwards of four
centuries, and had originally been the home of the Fyzackerleys, one
of the most ancient families in the county. So ancient, indeed, had
the Fyzackerleys at length become that they had died out, and the
estate had been brought to the hammer. The fortunate purchaser was the
present Sir Thomas's grandfather, at that time a sugar refiner in the
Minories, and some five years subsequently Lord Mayor of London. While
filling the latter office he had the good fortune to be knighted, and
later still by two or three years he was created a baronet. Why such
an honour had been conferred on the worthy but obscure sugar refiner,
no one seemed to know. There was some question about it at the time,
and certain people went so far as to whisper that the baronetcy had
been given in return for a loan of twenty thousand pounds made to a
certain august personage, who would have found repayment of the same a
somewhat inconvenient matter. But such a report was probably the
invention of pure malice. Be that as it may, the sugar refiner took
his title and his money down to Stammars; and there he died, and there
in due course he was buried. After him came his son, and then, in the
ordinary course of events, his grandson, the present Sir Thomas
Dudgeon and the third baronet of that name.
Sir Thomas, at this time, was close upon sixty years of age, and was a
short-statured, podgy man, with white hair, and a red, good-natured
face. He almost invariably wore a black tail-coat, black waistcoat,
pepper-and-salt trousers, and shoes. He wore starched check
neckcloths, and pointed collars that nearly touched his ears. His hats
were always of fluffy, white beaver and as they were very rarely
brushed, they gave him a certain shaggy and unkempt appearance. He had
a trick of whistling under his breath when he had nothing better to
do, and of jingling the keys and loose change in his pocket. It was a
peculiarity of Sir Thomas that his shoes always creaked when he
walked. No one could tell why every pair of shoes that he had should
do so, but they did. At Stammars everybody was so accustomed to this
creaking that if by any possibility he had become possessed of a
noiseless pair, his family would certainly have been alarmed: they
would have taken it as an omen that something dreadful was about to
happen. It was told in Pembridge as a good thing that when Sir Thomas
was presented to his Sovereign, his shoes creaked so loudly that the
eyes of all the great functionaries were turned on him in horror; but
that the little man backed smilingly out of the royal presence,
blandly unconscious of the consternation he had excited. When we first
make his acquaintance he had just been elected member for Pembridge,
in place of the late Mr. Rackstraw, who had represented that borough
for more than twenty years. Parliament would meet in February, when
the family would go up to town, and Sir Thomas would take his oaths
and his seat, and do his best to justify the hopes of his Pembridgian
supporters, that he would speedily become one of the shining lights of
his country's senate.
Lady Dudgeon was a tall, large-boned woman, some half dozen years
younger than her husband. She had a loud, rough-edged voice, and a
magisterial cross-examining manner. She was never happier than when
laying down the law to some of her servants or dependents, or scolding
them for an infringement of one or another of the innumerable rules
and regulations with which she strove to fence round the daily lives
of all those over whom she had any control. Had she been a man, Lady
Dudgeon would infallibly have developed into a Justice of the Peace,
and as such have been a terror to all the evil-doers of the
neighbourhood. With two exceptions, everybody at Stammars, her husband
included, stood in awe of her. Those exceptions were her eldest
daughter, Sophia, aged thirteen; and Eleanor Lloyd.
Lady Dudgeon had only two children living--the aforesaid Sophia, and
Caroline, who was two years younger than her sister. For their behoof
it was that an engagement had been entered into with Olive Deane. They
were two handsome, resolute girls, full of high spirits and mischief
who looked upon governesses as their natural enemies. Three ladies of
this profession they had already worried into resigning their position
at Stammars, and they had looked forward with considerable glee to
worrying Miss Deane in like manner.
It was on a complaint from Madame Ribaud, who was governess number
two, respecting some terrible act of mutiny, that Sophia obtained a
signal victory over her mother, and from that time she had never let
go the advantage thus gained. In consequence of Madame's complaint,
Lady Dudgeon had taken Sophia by the hand, and had led her away with
the avowed intention of shutting her up in a certain dark closet under
the stairs, and there leaving her to do penance during the whole of a
long summer's day--a day when the sun was shining and all the birds in
the shrubbery were calling to her to go out of doors and be one with
them.
"Mamma, you are not going to shut me up in that horrid hole?" said
Sophia, when the door had been flung open for her to enter.
"I certainly am going to shut you up here," said Lady Dudgeon, with a
portentous shake of her head.
"Then do you know what I shall do, mamma?"
"I don't know what you will do, Sophia, neither do I care."
"You are going to have a dinner-party on Friday," said Sophia, with
determination. "In the middle of the dinner I will walk into the room
and tell everybody that you wear a wig and have five false teeth!"
Lady Dudgeon glared down into the girl's bold face as if she could
hardly believe the evidence of her ears. What Sophia had just stated
she had hitherto fondly believed to be a secret known to her husband
and her maid alone.
"You naughty, vile girl," she stammered out. "I will send you right
away from home to a school on the Continent, and you shall not come
back any more until you are quite grown up."
"All right, mamma; I'll go," said the undaunted girl; "but I'll write
to everybody by post and tell them about the wig and the teeth;" and,
as Lady Dudgeon knew, her daughter was just the girl to carry out the
threat. Her ladyship was puzzled. "Look here, mamma," said Sophy:
"between you and me, Ribaud's nothing but an old stupid, and no more
fit to be a governess than I am. You take my advice, and send her
about her business. I'm going to get my rope and have a jolly skip
round the laurels."
And almost before her ladyship knew what had happened, she had been
well hugged, and found herself alone, staring blankly into the closet
under the stairs.
A few days later Madame Ribaud received a month's notice, and Lady
Dudgeon never attempted extreme measures with Sophia after that time.
It is not improbable that she had this very incident in her mind
during her first interview with Miss Deane after the latter's arrival
at Stammars. "I place them entirely in your hands," said her ladyship,
in reference to her two girls. "Exercise whatever discipline over them
you may think best, only don't box their ears, and don't trouble me.
If you find that they are becoming your master instead of you being
theirs, don't come and complain in the expectation that I shall assist
you to maintain an authority that you are not strong enough to keep in
your own hands. Should such a contingency arise, it would be better
for you to resign your situation at once."
For the first two or three days all went tolerably well, but hardly to
Olive's satisfaction. There were no overt signs of rebellion, but the
girls seemed unaccountably stupid. Whether their stupidity arose from
inattention, from weakness of memory, or from a natural lack of
intelligence, she was for some time at a loss to judge. But,
by-and-by, she began to suspect that this stupidity was merely an
assumption on their part purposely to annoy her, and that all the time
they were laughing at her in their sleeves. But at such a game as
that, Olive knew that her patience was far more than a match for
theirs, and so it turned out. Miss Deane seemed so quiet and easy,
that there was evidently no fun to be got out of her without trying
something more practical than stumbling over one's French verbs, or
making mistakes in the spelling of one's copies. Thus it fell out on a
certain morning when Miss Deane was going out for a walk, that she
found it impossible to get her arms into the sleeves of her waterproof
On examination, it was found that the sleeves had been sewn up at the
wrist. Miss Deane hung the waterproof up without a word, and took off
her bonnet. Then she said, "I think, young ladies, we will not go for
our usual walk this morning." Sophy and Carry, half frightened and
half defiant, were nudging each other and making believe that it was
great fun.
When they got back into the schoolroom, said Miss Deane: "As you young
ladies appear to be so fond of playing off practical jokes on other
people, you cannot reasonably object to one being played off on you.
You will, if you please, write out in detail and learn by heart, pages
twenty-five to twenty-nine of the irregular verbs in your French
Instruction Book. And you will not leave the room till you can repeat
the lesson to my satisfaction."
The two girls made a face at each other, but said nothing. It was not
the first time they had had a big task set them for a punishment, but
they had always contrived to win the day either by force or stratagem,
and they did not doubt their ability to do so in the present case.
By luncheon time they had got the lesson written out. It was not
pleasant to have to sacrifice their luncheon, but they were prepared
to submit to that: dinner would make up for everything. They did not
expect that Miss Deane would let them go down to dinner as usual, but
they did expect that she would go down herself, as Madame Ribaud had
done in similar cases. When this had happened, one of the housemaids
had always supplied them surreptitiously with a basket of provisions,
which they had drawn up to their window by means of a cord, and had
afterwards feasted on in secret. No dinners had ever tasted half so
sweet. Thus provisioned, they had been able to set Madame Ribaud at
defiance, who, indeed, had never the heart to extend their quarantine
beyond the usual hour for tea, and would then set her rebels free,
with a little sigh and an ominous shake of her head. As it had
happened before, so would it fall out again, thought the girls; but
they did not know Olive Deane.
Between luncheon and dinner-time they dawdled over their lesson,
skimming it carelessly over a few times, but employing themselves
more in drawing caricatures than in anything else. After a time the
dinner-bell rang--they dined early at Stammars when there was no
company--but apparently Miss Deane took no notice.
"Did you not hear the dinner-bell, Miss Deane?" asked Caroline,
timidly.
"Yes, I heard it; but I don't want any dinner to-day. I am going to
stay here with you."
The girls looked at each other. Carry's eyes flushed with tears; but
Sophy clenched her sharp white teeth, and said something under her
breath. All the same, she was as hungry as a young wolf. Both the
girls, in fact, were blessed with fine, healthy appetites, which they
took care to indulge on every possible occasion; and now their
appetites cried out in a way that it was almost impossible to resist.
Candles were lighted, and the afternoon wore itself wearily on till
tea-time came round. Anxious eyes were turned on Miss Deane. Surely
she would go down to tea; if not, what could she be made of? But no,
Miss Deane merely changed one book for another, and went on with her
reading, totally unconcerned.
Carry snivelled a little in secret, but Sophy looked as fierce as a
young brigand. Presently Sophy wrote a little note, and flung it
across to her sister. "If she doesn't let us out soon, I'll kill her
and roast her for supper."
This made poor Carry tremble violently. She fully believed in her
sister's ability to carry out her terrible threat. And so another
wretched hour doled itself wearily out.
Sophy's wolf was becoming very ravenous indeed. She saw clearly that
her enemy was too strong for her. By-and-by she tossed a scrap of
paper to her sister, on which she had written the words: "It's no use.
She carries too many guns for us"--this was a favourite phrase of her
father. "I'm going to learn my task, and I advise you to do the same."
Three-quarters of an hour later, Sophy walked up to Miss Deane and
held out her book in silence. Then she went through her task without a
single mistake. She took back the book, made Miss Deane an elaborate
curtsey, and marched out of the room with the dignified air of a young
duchess.
Carry did not manage so well. She broke down when about half-way
through, and burst into tears. Olive quietly shut the book, drew the
girl to her and kissed her, and then bade her run off and get some
supper.
From that day forth, Miss Deane and her pupils were on the best
possible terms.