"Take an interest in astrology."
And then the gardener wheeled her luggage on the barrow to the Manor,
and Dulcie crept timidly behind it to her first situation.
In order that this tragic story, for it is a tragedy, should not expand
into a novel, I will say at once that she was a complete success. That
was because she did exactly as I told her. As a rule, very silly people
never will do what they are told. But in that one point Dulcie was no
fool.
She was lamentably weak with the children. She had no art of teaching.
She did not encourage Joan to preserve a burnished mind, but she took to
astrology like a duck to water. From the first she was deeply interested
in it, and believed in it with flawless credulity.
"Dulcie," said Gertrude with approval, "has a very alert mind for one so
young. Joan has never taken the faintest interest in astrology, but
Dulcie shows an intelligent grasp of the subject. She studies it while
the children are preparing their syntax. You, yourself, Anne, have never
in all these years mastered even the elements of the science. I don't
believe you know what _an aspect_ means."
"I don't pretend to a powerful mind."
"Your difficulty is the inertia that belongs to a low vitality," said
Gertrude, "and I rather think that is what is the matter with Joan. She
hardly opens a book. She has not an idea beyond her chickens. She spends
hours among her coops."
"Dulcie's horoscope," continued Gertrude after a pause, "shows a marked
expansion in her immediate future. The wider life which she has entered
upon under our roof is no doubt the beginning of it. I feel it my duty
to help her in every way I can."
"Dear Gertrude," I said. "_Thank you._ My poor motherless child, for
whom I can do but little has found a powerful friend in you."
Conscience jabbed me as with a knitting needle, but I paid no more
attention to it than the Spartan boy to his fox.
"There is certainly a love affair in her near future," continued
Gertrude affably. "_She_ says that astrologically she can't see any such
thing for several years to come, but I know better. I found him under
Uranus, transiting her Venus. She is an extremely intelligent pupil, but
she is certainly obstinate. She _won't_ see it. But she can see Joan's
engagement and marriage quite clearly. We both see that. But I am
convinced Dulcie has an opportunity of marrying as well as Joan. Her
moon will shortly be going through the fifth house, the house of lovers
which speaks for itself. I wondered whether it might possibly be Mr.
Wilson. Most respectable--you know--Mr. Benson's pupil. He's always
coming over on one pretext or another, to play tennis or see Joan's
chickens. I saw him walking back through the park with Dulcie and the
children the other day."