and we can be as happy as possible Alexandre Lacazette Jersey together working and talking. Do you paint?’
‘A little — in a schoolgirlish fashion kind of way.’
‘Quite as well as I do, I daresay,’ Miss Darrell answered, laughing gaily, ‘only you are more modest about it. O, here comes your supper; may I sit with you while you eat it?’
‘I shall be very glad if you will.’
‘I hope you have brought Miss Crofton a good supper, Sarah,’ she went on in the same gay Fabian Benko Jersey girlish way. —‘Sarah is a very good creature, you must know, Miss Crofton, though she seems a little grim to strangers. That’s only a way Gerard Pique Jersey of hers: she can smile, I assure you, though you’d hardly think so.’
Sarah’s hard-looking mouth expanded into a kind of Fredy Guarin Jersey grin at this.
‘There’s no getting over you, Miss Darrell,’ she said; ‘you’ve got such a way of your own. I’ve brought Miss Crofton some cold beef; but if she’d like a bit of pickle, I wouldn’t mind going to ask cook for it. Cold meat does eat a little dry without pickle.’
This ‘bit of pickle’ was evidently a concession in my favour made to please Emily Darrell. I thanked Sarah, and told her that I would not trouble her with a journey to the cook. I was faint and worn-out with my day’s pilgrimage, and had eaten very little since morning; but the most epicurean repast ever prepared by a French chef would have seemed so much dust and ashes to me that night; so I sat down meekly to my supper of bread and meat, and listened to Milly Darrell’s chatter as I ate it.
Of course she told me all about the school, Miss Bagshot, and Miss Susan Bagshot. The elder of these two ladies was her favourite. Miss Susan had, in the remote Nicolas Douchez Jersey period of her youth, been the victim of some unhappy love-affair, which had soured her disposition, and inclined her to look on the joys and follies of girlhood with a jaundiced eye. It was easy enough to please Miss Bagshot, who had a genial matronly way, and took real delight in her pupils; but it was almost impossible to satisfy Miss Susan.
‘And I am sorry to say that you will be a good deal with her,’ Miss Darrell said, shaking her head gravely; ‘for you are to take the second English class under her — I heard them say so at dinner to-day — and I am afraid she will fidget you almost out of your life; but you must try to keep your temper, and take things as quietly as you can, and I daresay in time you will be able to get on with her.’
‘I’m sure I hope so,’ I answered rather sadly; and David de Gea Jersey then Miss Darrell asked me how long I was to be at Albury Lodge.
‘Three years,’ I told her; ‘and after that, Miss Bagshot is to place Ivan Strinic Jersey me somewhere as a governess.’
‘You are going to be a governess always?’
‘I suppose so,’ I answered. The word ‘always’ struck me with a little sharp pain, almost like a wound. Yes, I supposed it would be always. I was neither pretty nor attractive. What issue could there be for me out of that dull hackneyed round of daily duties which makes up the sum of a governess’s life |
