always agreeable for choice: she found it the best policy, and her indolent nature shrank from disagreeables of every kind. This pretty girl had made herself quite useful, and a chat with her would enliven a dull hour in the train. Curiosity shifted its point, but remained actively in force.

“Tell me all about it!” she said suavely. “I know nothing about teachers. Shocking, isn’t it? They alarm me too much. I have a horror of clever women. You don’t look at all clever. I mean that as a compliment—far too pretty and smart, but I suppose you are dreadfully learned, all the same. What are you going to teach?”

“French. I am almost as good as a Frenchwoman, for I’ve talked little else for sixteen years. Mother and I spoke English together, or I should have forgotten my own language. It seems, from a scholastic point of view, that it’s a useful blend to possess—perfect French and an English temperament. ‘Mademoiselle’ is not always a model of patience!”

“And you think you will be? I prophesy differently. You’ll throw the whole thing up in six months, and fly off to mamma in India. You haven’t the least idea what you are in for, but you’ll find out, you’ll find out! Where is this precious school? In town, did you say? Shall you live in the house or with friends?”

“I have no friends in London except Miss Farnborough, the head mistress, but there are fifteen other mistresses besides myself. That will be fifteen friends ready-made. I am going to share lodgings with one of them, and be a bachelor girl on my own account. I’m so excited about it. After living in countries where a girl can’t go to the pillar-box alone, it will be thrilling to be free to do just as I like. Please don’t pity me! I’m going to have great fun.”

Mrs Fanshawe hitched herself still further into her corner and smiled a lazy, quizzical smile.

“Oh, I don’t pity you—not one bit! All young people nowadays think they are so much wiser than their parents; it’s a wholesome lesson to learn their mistake. You’re a silly, blind, ridiculous little girl, and if I’d been your mother, I should have insisted upon taking you with me, whether you liked it or not. I always wanted a daughter like you—sons are so dull; but perhaps it’s just as well that she never appeared. She might have wanted to be independent, too, in which case we should have quarrelled.—So those fifteen school-mistresses make up your whole social circle, do they? I wouldn’t mind prophesying that you’ll never want to speak a word to them out of school hours! I have a friend 

 Prev. P 27/221 next