"It must be a wild one, I'm afraid. I look hot-housey this afternoon,
for I'm dressed up to pay calls, but really I have just left school, and
feel as wild as I can be. You mustn't be shocked if you meet me in a
short frock some morning tearing about the fields."
She leant back against the stand, staring at me with such big eyes, and
then she said the very last thing in the world which I expected to hear.
"May I come with you? Will you let me come too some day?"
Come with me! Rachel Greaves, with her solemn face, and dragged-back
hair, and her proper conversation. To tear about the fields! I nearly
had a fit.
"I suppose you want to botanise?" I asked feebly, and she shook her
head and said--
"No; I want to talk to you--I want to do just what you do when you are
alone."
"Scramble through the hedges, and jump the streams, and swing on the
gates, and go bird's-nesting in the hedges?"
She gave a gulp of dismay, but stuck to her guns.
"Y-es! At least, I could try--you could teach me. I've learned such a
number of things in my life, but I don't know how to play. That part of
my education has been neglected."
"Wherever did you go to school? What a dreadful place it must have
been!"
"I never went to school; I had governesses at home, and I have no
brothers nor sisters; I am very much interested in girls of my own age,
especially poor girls, and try to work among them, but I am not very
successful. They are afraid of me, and I can't enter into their
amusements; but if I could learn to romp and be lively, it might be
different."
It was such a funny thing to ask, and she looked so terribly in earnest
over it, that I was simply obliged to laugh.
"Do you mean to say you want to learn to be lively, as a lesson--that
you are taking it up like wood-carving or poker-work--for the sake of
your class and your influence there?"