Laura glowed with pleasure. Now at least the awful personage would know that she was clever, and loved to learn. But Mrs. Gurley smiled the chilliest thinkable smile of acknowledgment, and did not reply a word.
She escorted the other to the front door, and held it open for them to pass out. Then, however, her pretence of affability faded clean away: turning her head just so far that she could look down her nose at her own shoulder, she said: “Follow me!”—in a tone Mother would not have used even to Sarah. Feeling inexpressibly small Laura was about to obey, when a painful thought struck her.
“Oh please, I had a box—with my clothes in it!” she cried. “Oh, I hope they haven’t forgotten and taken it away again.”
But she might as well have spoken to the hatstand: Mrs. Gurley had sailed off, and was actually approaching a turn in the hall before Laura made haste to follow her and to keep further anxiety about her box to herself. They went past one staircase, round a bend into shadows as black as if, outside, no sun were shining, and began to ascend another flight of stairs, which was the widest Laura had ever seen. The banisters were as thick as your arm, and on each side of the stair-carpeting the space was broad enough for two to walk abreast: what a splendid game of trains you could have played there! On the other hand the landing windows were so high up that only a giant could have seen out of them.
These things occurred to Laura mechanically. What really occupied her, as she trudged behind, was how she could please this hard-faced woman and make her like her, for the desire to please, to be liked by all the world, was the strongest her young soul knew. And there must be a way, for Godmother had found it without difficulty.
She took two steps at once, to get nearer to the portly back in front of her.
“What a very large place this is!” she said in an insinuating voice.
She hoped the admiration, thus subtly expressed in the form of surprise, would flatter Mrs. Gurley, as a kind of co-proprietor; but it was evident that it did nothing of the sort: the latter seemed to have gone deaf and dumb, and marched on up the stairs, her hands clasped at her waist, her eyes fixed ahead, like a walking stone-statue.
On the top floor she led the way to a room at the end of a long passage. There were four beds in this room, a washhand-stand, a chest of drawers, and a wall cupboard. But at first sight Laura had eyes only for the familiar object that stood at the foot of one of the beds.
“Oh, there’s my box!” she cried, “Someone must have brought it up.”
It was unroped; she had simply to hand over the key. Mrs. Gurley went down on her knees before it, opened the lid, and began to pass the contents to Laura, directing her where to lay and hang them. Overawed by such complaisance, Laura moved nimbly about the room shaking and unfolding, taking care to be back at the box to the minute so as not to keep Mrs. Gurley waiting. And her promptness was rewarded; the stern face seemed to relax. At the mere hint of this, Laura grew warm through and through; and as she could neither control her feelings nor keep them to herself, she rushed to an extreme and overshot the mark.
“I’ve got an apron like that. I think they’re so pretty,” she said cordially, pointing to the one Mrs. Gurley wore.
The latter abruptly stopped her work, and, resting her hands on the sides of the box, gave Laura one of the dreaded looks over her glasses, looked at her from top to toe, and as though she were only now beginning to see her. There was a pause, a momentary suspension of the breath, which Laura soon learned to expect before a rebuke.
“Little gels,” said Mrs. Gurley—and even in the midst of her confusion Laura could not but be struck by the pronunciation of this word. “Little gels—are required—to wear white aprons when they come here!”—a break after each few words, as well as an emphatic head-shake, accentuated their severity. “And I should like to know, if your mother, has never taught you, that it is very rude, to point, and also to remark, on what people wear.”
Laura went scarlet: if there was one thing she, Mother, all of them, prided themselves on, it was the good manners that had been instilled into them since their infancy. The rough reproof seemed to scorch her.
She went to and fro more timidly than before. Then, however, something happened which held a ray of hope.
“Why, what is this?” asked Mrs. Gurley freezingly, and held up to view—with the tips of her fingers, Laura thought—a small, black Prayer Book. “Pray, are you not a dissenter?”—For the College was nonconformist.
“Well … no, I’m not,” said Laura, in a tone of intense apology. Here, at last, was her chance. “But it really doesn’t matter a bit. I can go to another church quite well. I even think I’d rather. For a change. And the service isn’t so long, at least so I’ve heard—except the sermon,” she added truthfully.
Had she denied religion altogether, the look Mrs. Gurley bent on her could not have been more annihilating.
“There is—unfortunately!—no occasion, for you to do anything of the kind,” she retorted. “I myself, am an Episcopalian, and I expect those gels, who belong to the Church of England, to attend it, with me.”
The unpacking at an end, Mrs. Gurley rose, smoothed down her apron, and was just on the point of turning away, when on the bed opposite Laura’s she espied an undergarment, lying wantonly across the counterpane. At this blot on the orderliness of the room she
