returning till they should all meet in London on the 1st of October.
But before that 1st, poor Mrs. Lacy wrote again, with great regret and many excuses for the inconvenience she was causing. Her son and her doctor had insisted on her resigning her situation at once; and they would not even allow her to go back until her place could be supplied.
'Poor thing!' said Lady Jane. 'I always thought it was too much for her. I wish we could have made her more comfortable: it would have been such a thing for her!'
'So it would,' answered Lady Barbara, 'if she had had to do with any other child. A little consideration or discretion, such as might have been expected from a girl of eleven years old towards a person in her circumstances, would have made her happy, and enabled her to assist her son. But I have given up expecting feeling from Katharine.'
That speech made Kate swell with anger at her aunt's tone and in her anger she forgot to repent of having been really thoughtless and almost unkind, or to recollect how differently her own gentle Sylvia at home would have behaved to the poor lady. She liked the notion of novelty, and hoped for a new governess as kind and bright as Miss Oswald.
Moreover, she was delighted to find that Mrs. George Wardour was going to live in London for the present, that Alice might be under doctors, and Sylvia under masters. Kate cared little for the why, but was excessively delighted with plans for meeting, hopes of walks, talks, and tea-drinkings together; promises that the other dear Sylvia should come to meet her; and above all, an invitation to spend Sylvia Joanna's birthday with her on the 21st of October, and go all together either to the Zoological Gardens or to the British Museum, according to the weather.
With these hopes, Kate was only moderately sorry to leave the sea and pine-trees behind her, and find herself once more steaming back to London, carrying in her hand a fine blue and white travelling-bag, worked for her by her two little friends, but at which Lady Barbara had coughed rather dryly. In the bag were a great many small white shells done up in twists of paper, that pretty story 'The Blue Ribbons,' and a small blank book, in which, whenever the train stopped, Kate wrote with all her might. For Kate had a desire to convince Sylvia Joanna that one was much happier without being a countess, and she thought this could be done very touchingly and poetically by a fable in verse; so she thought she had a very good idea by changing the old daisy that pined for transplantation and found it very unpleasant, into a harebell.
A harebell blue on a tuft of moss In the wind her bells did toss.
That was her beginning; and the poor harebell was to get into a hot- house, where they wanted to turn her into a tall stately campanula, and she went through a great deal from the gardeners. There was to be a pretty fairy picture to every verse; and it would make a charming birthday present, much nicer than anything that could be bought; and Kate kept on smiling to herself as the drawings came before her mind's eye, and the rhymes to her mind's ear.
So they came home; but it was odd, the old temper of the former months seemed to lay hold of Kate as soon as she set foot in the house in Bruton Street, as if the cross feelings were lurking in the old corners.
She began by missing Mrs. Lacy very much. The kind soft governess had made herself more loved than the wayward child knew; and when Kate had run into the schoolroom and found nobody sitting by the fire, no sad sweet smile to greet her, no one to hear her adventures, and remembered that she had worried the poor widow, and that she would never come back again, she could have cried, and really had a great mind to write to her, ask her pardon, and say she was sorry. It would perhaps have been the beginning of better things if she had; but of all things in the world, what prevented her? Just this--that she had an idea that her aunt expected it of her! O Kate! Kate!
So she went back to the harebell, and presently began rummaging among her books for a picture of one to copy; and just then Lady Barbara came in, found half a dozen strewn on the floor, and ordered her to put them tidy, and then be dressed. That put her out, and after her old bouncing fashion she flew upstairs, caught her frock in the old hitch at the turn, and half tore off a flounce.
No wonder Lady Barbara was displeased; and that was the beginning of things going wrong--nay, worse than before the going to Bournemouth. Lady Barbara was seeking for a governess, but such a lady as she wished for was not to be found in a day; and in the meantime she was resolved to do her duty by her niece, and watched over her behaviour, and gave her all the lessons that she did not have from masters.
Whether it was that Lady Barbara did not know exactly what was to be expected of a little girl, or whether Kate was more fond of praise than was good for her, those daily lessons were more trying than ever they had been. Generally she had liked them; but with Aunt Barbara, the being told to sit upright, hold her book straight, or pronounce her words rightly, always teased her, and put her out of humour at the beginning. Or she was reminded of some failure of yesterday, and it always seemed to her unjust that bygones should not be bygones; or even when she knew she had been doing her best, her aunt always thought she could have done better, so that she had no heart or spirit to try another time, but went on in a dull, save-trouble way, hardly caring to exert herself to avoid a scolding, it was so certain to come.
It was not right--a really diligent girl would have won for herself the peaceful sense of having done her best, and her aunt would have owned it in time; whereas poor Kate's resistance only made herself and her aunt worse to each other every day, and destroyed her sense of duty and obedience more and more.
Lady Barbara could not be always with her, and when once out of sight there was a change. If she were doing a lesson with one of her masters, she fell into a careless attitude in an instant, and would often chatter so that there was no calling her to order, except by showing great determination to tell her aunt. It made her feel both sly and guilty to behave so differently out of sight, and yet now that she had once begun she seemed unable to help going on and she was sure, foolish child, that Aunt Barbara's strictness made her naughty!
Then there were her walks. She was sent out with Josephine in the morning and desired to walk nowhere but in the Square; and in the afternoon she and Josephine were usually set down by the carriage together in one of the parks, and appointed where to meet it again after Lady Jane had taken her airing when she was well enough, for she soon became more ailing than usual. They were to keep in the quiet paths, and not speak to anyone.
But neither Josephine nor her young lady had any turn for what was 'triste.' One morning, when Kate was in great want of a bit of India-rubber, and had been sighing because of the displeasure she should meet for having lost her own through using it in play-hours, Josephine offered to take her--only a little out of her way--to buy a new piece.
Kate knew this was not plain dealing, and hated herself for it, but she was tired of being scolded, and consented! And then how miserable she was; how afraid of being asked where she had been; how terrified lest her aunt should observe that it was a new, not an old, piece; how humiliated by knowing she was acting untruth!
And then Josephine took more liberties. When Kate was walking along the path, thinking how to rhyme to 'pride,' she saw Josephine talking over the iron rail to a man with a beard; and she told her maid afterwards that it was wrong; but Josephine said, 'Miladi had too good a heart to betray her,' and the man came again and again, and once even walked home part of the way with Josephine, a little behind the young lady.
Kate was desperately affronted, and had a great mind to complain to her aunts. But then Josephine could have told that they had not been in the Square garden at all that morning, but in much more entertaining streets! Poor Kate, these daily disobediences did not weigh on her nearly as much as the first one did; it was all one general sense of naughtiness!
Working at her harebell was the pleasantest thing she did, but her eagerness about it often made her neglectful and brought her into scrapes. She had filled one blank book with her verses and pictures, some rather good, some very bad; and for want of help and correction she was greatly delighted with her own performance, and thought it quite worthy of a little ornamental album, where she could write out the verses and gum in the drawings.
'Please, Aunt Barbara, let me go to the Soho Bazaar to-day?'
'I cannot take you there, I have an engagement.'
'But may I not go with Josephine?'
'Certainly not. I would not trust you there with her. Besides, you spend too much upon trumpery, as it is.'
'I don't want it for myself; I want something to get ready for Sylvia's birthday--the Sylvia that is come to London, I mean.'
'I do not approve of a habit of making presents.'
'Oh! but, Aunt Barbara, I am to drink tea with her on her birthday, and spend the day, and go to the Zoological Gardens, and I have all ready but my presents! and it will not be in time if you won't let me go to-day.'
'I never grant anything to pertinacity,' answered Lady Barbara. 'I have told you that I cannot go with you to- day, and you ought to submit.'
