Even the governesses noticed the change in her.
Three of them sat one evening round the fire in Mrs. Gurley’s sitting-room, with their feet on the fender. The girls had gone to bed; it was Mrs. Gurley’s night off, and as Miss Day was also on leave, the three who were left could draw in more closely than usual. Miss Snodgrass had made the bread into toast—in spite of Miss Chapman’s quakings lest Mrs. Gurley should notice the smell when she came in—and, as they munched, Miss Snodgrass related how she had just confiscated a book Laura Rambotham was trying to smuggle upstairs, and how it had turned out that it belonged, not to Laura herself, but to Lilith Gordon.
“She was like a little spitfire about it all the same. A most objectionable child, I call her. It was only yesterday I wanted to look at some embroidery on her apron—a rather pretty new stitch—and do you think she’d let me see it? She jerked it away and glared at me as if she would have liked to eat me. I could have boxed her ears.”
“I never have any trouble with Laura. I don’t think you know how to manage her,” said Miss Chapman, and executed a little manoeuvre. She had poor teeth; and, having awaited a moment when Miss Snodgrass’s sharp eyes were elsewhere engaged, she surreptitiously dropped the crusts of the toast into her handkerchief.
“I’d be sorry to treat her as you do,” said Miss Snodgrass, and yawned. “Girls need to be made to sit up nowadays.”
She yawned again, and gazing round the room for fresh food for talk, caught Miss Zielinski with her eye. “Hullo, Ziely, what are you deep in?” She put her arm round the other’s neck, and unceremoniously laid hold of her book. “You naughty girl, you’re at Ouida again! Always got your nose stuck in some trashy novel.”
“Do let me alone,” said Miss Zielinski pettishly, holding fast to the book; but she did not raise her eyes, for they were wet.
“You know you’ll count the washing all wrong again tomorrow, your head’ll be so full of that stuff.”
“Yes, it’s time to go, girls; tomorrow’s Saturday.” And Miss Chapman sighed; for, on a Saturday morning between six and eight o’clock, fifty-five lots of washing had to be sorted out and arranged in piles.
“Holy Moses, what a life!” ejaculated Miss Snodgrass, and yawned again, in a kind of furious desperation. “I swear I’ll marry the first man that asks me, to get away from it. As long as he has money enough to keep me decently.”
“You would soon wish yourself back, if you had no more feeling for him that that,” reproved Miss Chapman.
“Catch me! Not even if he had a hump, or kept a mistress, or was over eighty. Oh dear, oh dear!”—she stretched herself so violently that her bones cracked; to resume, in a tone of ordinary conversation: “I do wish I knew whether to put a brown wing or a green one in that blessed hat of mine.”
Miss Chapman’s face straightened out from its shocked expression. “Your hat? Why do you want to change it? It’s very nice as it is.”
“My dear Miss Chapman, it’s at least six months out of date. Ziely, you’re crying!”
“I’m not,” said Miss Zielinski weakly, caught in the act of blowing her nose.
“How on earth can you cry over a book? As if it were true!”
“I thank God I haven’t such a cold heart as you.”
“And I thank God I’m not a romantic idiot. But your name’s not Thekla for nothing I suppose.”
“My name’s as good as yours. And I won’t be looked down on because my father was once a German.”
“ ‘Mr. Kayser, do you vant to buy a dawg?’ ” hummed Miss Snodgrass.
“Girls, girls!” admonished Miss Chapman. “How you two do bicker. There, that’s Mrs. Gurley now! And it’s long past ten.”
At the creaking of the front door both juniors rose, gathered their belongings together, and hurried from the room. But it was a false alarm; and having picked up some crumbs and set the chairs in order, Miss Chapman resumed her seat. As she waited, she looked about her and wondered, with a sigh, whether it would ever be her good fortune to call this cheery little room her own. It was only at moments like the present that she could indulge such a dream. Did Mrs. Gurley stand before her, majestic in bonnet and mantle, as in a minute or two she would, or draped in her great shawl, thoughts of this kind sank to their proper level, and Miss Chapman knew them for what they were worth. But sitting alone by night, her chin in her hand, her eyes on the dying fire, around her the eerie stillness of the great house, her ambition did not seem wholly out of reach; and, giving rein to her fancy, she could picture herself sweeping through halls and rooms, issuing orders that it was the business of others to fulfil, could even think out a
