THE STORY OF
A GOVERNESS

BY
MRS. M. O. W. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF
“A ROSE IN JUNE,” “SQUIRE ARDEN,” “VICTORIAN AGE OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE,” ETC.
NEW YORK
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
9 and 11 EAST 16th STREET
Copyright, 1891
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY

The Story of a Governess

THE STORY OF A GOVERNESS.

CHAPTER I.

Janet Summerhayes did not start in life with the feelings usually attributed to the young governess when beginning what is certainly a very thankless trade, with about as little prospect of continued prosperity as any in the world. Many representations of that sad and resigned young heroine have appeared before the world. We all know the appearance of the slight girl in deep mourning shyly coming into a strange house and a new world, shrinking alike from kindness and neglect; feeling that she is likely to be shut out there from everything that is agreeable, expecting humiliation, and, if not ready to take offence, at least quite aware that nobody is likely to take her feelings into consideration, or think that she is made of young flesh and blood like the others. There are many excuses for this frame of mind, and in many cases the worst prognostics are carried out. But I am very glad to say that this was not at all the idea with which the subject of this story prepared to go forth upon the world.

Her position up to this time had not been like that of the young and gentle governess of romance, an exceptionally sheltered and happy one. She had not been the only daughter of a doting father or mother, whose want of means to provide for her was only discovered upon their sudden death. On the contrary, Janet’s experience was entirely that of a dependent. It is true the dependence was more or less a natural one. She was a relation of her patroness, and she had grown up from childhood in Miss Philipson’s house, without any consciousness that it was not her home, and with much of the feelings of a child, always subject, always liable to be ordered about and reproved, and little considered, but only in a way common to children. She had been very well educated on the whole, very well cared for, nicely dressed, since that was quite according to the fitness of things, and not allowed in anything to fall behind the neighboring girls of her age in any pleasure or accomplishment. It would have been contrary to Miss Philipson’s credit, and it would have impaired her comfort, if Janet had not been on a level with the rest, or if she had not been cheerful and happy in her life. She was always kind to the girl, not being naturally unkind to anyone. She liked to have everything pleasant about her, and she had a conscience besides—both which things were very good for her little cousin. She did not provide for Janet, but that was all—and indeed, having done so much for her, and given her on the whole such a happy life up to her twentieth year, there was no failure of duty in this; and though some of Janet’s friends were inclined to blame Miss Philipson, Janet herself was much more just, and neither felt nor expressed any blame.

“Aunt Mary was always good to me,” the girl said. “I had no right to that, but she gave it me freely, and we were very happy together, and certainly I had no right to expect any more.”

“My dear, I would not for the world impair your gratitude or your affection for your poor aunt,” said the vicar’s wife; “in many things she deserved it fully, but——”

“There is no ‘but,’” said Janet. She was not perhaps quite so much overcome by grief as her friends would have liked to see her. There is a very simple standard in this respect which people like to see followed. They like to see a grief which is overwhelming for the moment, tears without measure, a sorrow which can take no comfort, all the better if it makes the mourner ill, and perhaps confines her to bed for a few days in a shrouded room, without any occupation but that of brooding and weeping over her loss. And then they expect her to cheer up—not too quickly, but with a little visible advance every day, an advance which they can feel to be owing more or less to their own sympathetic kindness and good offices. Janet had to a certain extent followed this unspoken rule. She had cried a great deal, though her health had not at all suffered; but after the funeral she had perhaps too quickly regained her cheerfulness. When the doctor proposed to her, which was a thing that happened very soon after, it had been all she could do not to laugh at the droll idea that anyone should think it possible she would marry a middle-aged country doctor, she—Janet! She did laugh in the safety of her own room where nobody could hear her, recalling his look, and all the peculiarities of his unattractive person and his rough riding dress. He wanted to save her from the life of a governess by binding her to him, and his shabby house, and his busy, dry, joyless existence. How extraordinary, how ludicrous it was that anybody should think it was better to vegetate than to go out into the world and seek your fortune! Janet had lived at Clover all her life, and she liked the little place. The scenes were all so familiar, the people were all friends; but then she never for a moment supposed that she could be bound to such a seclusion. It had always been her expectation that one time or another she was to fling herself forth upon the world.

At the vicarage they were exceedingly tender of the girl who was going forth upon fate like this. Mrs. Bland made a survey of all her clothes, and mended some and condemned others with a pathetic tenderness.

“You must have all your linen in order,” she said, “for there is nothing a girl is so apt to forget. I was in rags myself when my first wedding outfit wore out before I ever thought of getting a new set of things. A girl can see when she wants a new frock, but as for her under-things she always leaves that to her mother.”

“But you forget, Mrs. Bland, I have never had a mother,” said Janet.

“Ah, my poor child! but you were very kindly thought of, Janet, very kindly.”

“Do you think I meant any reproach to poor Aunt Mary? Oh, no, no! She liked me to have everything. She liked me to be the best dressed child in the parish. But as I grew up I saw to it myself. She thought it was best for me. But I shall always take the most care of the buttons you have sewed on. Fancy sewing on buttons and seeing after tapes for me!”

“It is the most natural thing in the world,” said the vicaress. “I only wish I could always take the charge of you, Janet; but we are old people, and we have little to leave, and it would only be putting off a little what would have to be faced at last.”

“Dear Mrs. Bland!” cried Janet, looking at her with something like tears in her eyes: they were real tears—and yet even while they sprang by instinct of nature, the little thing could not help the rising of a revolt against the thought of settling again at Clover after she had once been unseated from her corner. At Clover! when what she was thinking of was the world.

“But you must promise me, my dear,” said the old lady, with a tremor in her voice, “that as long as we live you will always look on the vicarage as your home. If this Mrs. Harwood should not turn out all you expect, you must not think it necessary to stay on, you know, and fret yourself to death trying to make it do. You must always remember you have a home to come back to, Janet.”

“But the vicar thought Mrs. Harwood was very nice.”

“So he did, but in such cases a man’s opinion does not go for very much. If a woman looks nice and talks nicely, and has an agreeable smile, it is all the vicar thinks of: and most people are nice to him.”

“How could they help it, he is so delightful himself?”

“Well, I tell you, he is no judge; and in the best of places, Janet, there is a great deal to put up with. Every family has its own ways, and you will be a stranger, and it will be hard for you to be left out and to feel yourself always an outsider. There is a young lady, and she will go out to her parties and balls and you will be left behind. I don’t mean that you will feel it now, when your spirit is broken, but by and by, when in the course of nature——”

“It would be just the same at Clover,” said Janet; “there are neither balls nor parties.”

“Ah, but everything there is you are asked to. That makes such a difference: and it will not be the case there. My dear, I am frightened about you, for you are too bold. You don’t realize the difference. It will be a great difference,” said Mrs. Bland, shaking her head.

Janet could have laughed, but did not. She was very bold. The new life and the strange family had no terrors for her. Novelty was dear, an exhilaration not a terror, to this little girl. Her heart was beating high with expectation while all these prophecies were poured into her ear. But it would not have been in good taste (Janet felt) to exhibit the real state of her feelings, so she answered, demurely, that she hoped she was not too bold.

“But, dear Mrs. Bland, when one has to do it, don’t you think one had better try to do it cheerily and think the best? Don’t you remember the old song in the play that the vicar likes so much—

“‘A merry heart goes all the way
A sad one tires in a mile, a’!”’

“That’s true enough,” said Mrs. Bland, still shaking her head, “but men don’t know half that women have to put up with. Anyhow, Janet, my poor dear, you must always recollect this, that if it should ever become more than you can bear you must just give up the struggle and come back home. This is home so long as he and I are alive, and, if he goes first, whatever poor little cottage I may get to hide my old head in, you’ll just be as welcome there; and if I go first there will be all the more occasion, for he will sorely want somebody to look after him.”

At the mingled prospect of Janet’s need, and her own poor little problematical cottage as the vicar’s widow, and the vicar’s want of somebody to look after him, Mrs. Bland broke down entirely, and shed salt tears. Indeed, those things were all possible, though only one of the last two sorrows could be. But when an old pair come to the end of life, it is almost certain that one of them must be left one day to survive and miss the other, though, to be sure, it does happen now and then that they are so blessed as to die within a day or two of each other, which is by far the best.

Janet went to her old friend, and kissed her, and was, as Mrs. Bland said, very sweet, comforting the old lady with tender words and letting fall a few tears, as it is easy on any provocation to do at nineteen. And immediately after it was tea-time, and the vicar came in from his study, where he was writing his sermon, and everything became cheerful again. Afterwards Mrs. Bland put all Janet’s “things” together, and looked at them with affectionate, complacent eyes, patting each snowy heap.

“Now, Janet,” she said, “you have a dozen of each, my dear, and not a button or a tape wanting, and all the trimmings nice and in good order. That will last you for a long time. You must keep an eye upon the trimming, which London washerwomen tear dreadfully. I’ve put our old-fashioned Buckinghamshire lace, made in my old parish where I was born, upon all the new ones. There is nothing that wears and washes so well. You never have had to think of these things till now; but you must promise me to look them over carefully every Saturday. You know, ‘A stitch in time——’”

Janet gave the promise with all necessary earnestness, and the “things” were carried upstairs and carefully packed. It was a sad evening at the vicarage. The old people said all manner of sweet and pretty things to the neophyte, which Janet tried when she could to ward off by a little joke, or one of the merry little speeches which all the Clover people expected from her: but, though this might turn the edge of a piece of serious advice for a moment, the grave tone always came back. A sentence might be begun lightly, but it was sure to end with “remember, Janet——” The old people both kissed her and blessed her when she went upstairs to bed—“The last night,” they said to each other with an interchange of sympathetic glances.

“And she takes it so easily. She is not a bit daunted,” said Mrs. Bland, shaking her head.

“Perhaps that’s all the better,” said the vicar; but the old couple were almost alarmed, in spite of themselves, at Janet’s calm.

If they had but known! She went upstairs quietly enough with a composed step. But when she got to her own room, which was, happily, at the other end of the house, Janet threw down on her bed the things she was carrying, which were presents from her old friends—a writing-case from one, a work-basket from the other—and danced, actually danced a lively old hornpipe step, which she had learned when she was a child. She did it before the glass, and nodded and smiled at herself as she bobbed up and down. Then stretching out her arms, flung herself in the old easy-chair and, said, “Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” softly under her breath “The last night,” said Janet to herself. The last of all this dull old life, which she knew in every feature, which never had anything new in it—no excitement, no change: but to do the same things at the same hours every day, and come in to meals and sit down in the same chair, and go to church and go to bed. She was not at all without affection for the people who were so kind to her, but to feel herself upon the edge of the unknown went to Janet’s head. It was like laughing gas, or champagne, or any other stimulant to gayety. The idea intoxicated her. As for all the dolorous pictures that had been placed before her, she believed none of them. To go off among people she had never seen, to plunge into the midst of a life she knew nothing about, to become a member of a family whose name alone she knew—it was like beginning a new world to Janet. She would have everything to find about them—their Christian names, their stories, if they had any; perhaps the family story, if there was one—the skeleton in the closet, the romance; whatever there might be. What fun! she said to herself, clapping her hands. Even the new place would be something to begin with—the new home and customs, the new rooms.

It appeared to her altogether in a bright light of expectation—everything nice, everything new. The name of Mrs. Harwood, a widow lady with three children, living in St. John’s Wood, will not, perhaps, appear exciting at the first glance. She was Mrs. Novelty, the gatekeeper of the new world, to Janet, and her three children were three romances about to begin, in each of which Janet would come by degrees to be the heroine. The house in St. John’s Wood was the theatre, the stage on which she was to make her first appearance. She knew no more of that respectable (or disrespectable) region than she did of Timbuctoo. As for the naughtiness, that was all a sealed book to Janet. Her wildest thoughts were as innocent as a child’s. She had absolute ignorance as a guard to her imagination, which is a guard always to be desired, and most so at nineteen. The life she longed to know was the common life of the world. Not even in her dreams had she thought of the transgression of any law. She expected to have her own merits recognized, to have adoration and homage laid at her feet, to find not only Prince Charming in the end, but, no doubt, many others whose sighs and glances would make existence very amusing. She expected that admiration would meet her, that she would be in the midst of a story before she knew. She expected to triumph all along the line. “The world’s my oyster, which with this glance I’ll open.” That was the light in which Janet contemplated the life of a governess in St. John’s Wood, which she was to begin next day.

CHAPTER II.

The household at the vicarage was astir earlier than usual next morning, which was altogether unnecessary, for Jane did not leave Clover till after twelve o’clock; but that was a kind of tribute to the excitement in which everybody had a part. The morning was spent in investigations as to whether anything was wanting in Janet’s little travelling work-case, where she kept (by special provision of Mrs. Bland) a reel of black silk and one of white cotton, needles, thimble, and scissors; or in her little writing-case, where (supplied by the vicar) she had two sheets of notepaper, two envelopes, two post-cards, the same of postage stamps, a pen on an ivory-holder, and a small travelling inkbottle. These little articles were quite independent of the handsome work-box and writing-case, severally given her by her kind friends, and were intended solely for the necessities of the journey, though, perhaps, as it was only three hours by railway to London such careful provisions were scarcely necessary.

Janet’s box was not locked till ten o’clock, in case some one might recollect something that had been forgotten; but after every precaution had been taken, the last strap fastened, her railway rug and cloak neatly, nay, almost more than neatly, put up, her own hat put on, and her coat buttoned to the throat, not one detail left which had not been attended to, there was still one hour to spare before the train left. They went out into the wintry garden, where everything was bare, and strolled round the walks—the three together, the vicar in his greatcoat, prepared to accompany Janet to the railway, and Mrs. Bland with a large white shawl over her cap. It was a beautiful morning, the sun shining red through the mist, and everything so warmed in color and sentiment by those ruddy rays that it was almost impossible to believe that it was a cold November day.

“I wish now,” said the vicar, “that I had insisted, as I always wished, on going up with Janet to town, and seeing her safe in Mrs. Harwood’s hands.”

“I almost wish you had, dear,” said Mrs. Bland.

“But I don’t,” cried Janet. “Oh, please don’t think of such a thing! How am I to learn to manage for myself if you pet me like this, as if I could do nothing? No, dear vicar, I should so much prefer to part with you here, in our own dear Clover, and to keep the—image quite unbroken.”

Janet was a little at a loss how to finish her sentence, but felt very successful when she thought of these words.

Mrs. Bland put up her handkerchief to her eyes.

“There’s something in that,” she said, “to leave us just as I hope you will find us when you come back. And always do remember, Janet, if any difficulty should arise, that here we are, always so happy to have you—only sorry that we can’t keep you altogether.”

“Always delighted to have you,” echoed the vicar, “and sorry above measure——”

“But I hope no difficulty will arise,” said Janet, very briskly; “I don’t intend there should. I am not quite like a little novice, am I? I have seen a little of the world. I remember watching how the governess at the Grange got on, or rather how she didn’t get on, and thinking had I been in her place—! So you see I am not unprepared. And then it will be everything to know I may come back here for my holidays, when I have any.”

“We ought to have made a condition about that,” said the vicar. “I have been thinking so for some time. We should have put it down in black and white, so many weeks at a certain time, say Christmas or Easter, instead of leaving it to chance as we have done.”

“Not Christmas,” said Mrs. Bland, “nor Easter either, for that would not be so convenient; but in August, when every child has holidays.”

“Only then,” said the vicar—“for I thought of that—they might be going abroad, or to the seaside, or somewhere where it would be nice for Janet to go.”

“People very seldom take the governess with them when they go abroad,” said Mrs. Bland, shaking her head.

“But, dear Mrs. Bland,” said Janet, “you always used to say one should not think of holidays till one had done some work. And it will come all right about that. The grand thing is having a place to come to when one is free; a place,” she said, with a little moisture springing into a corner of her bright eyes—a little real moisture, which Janet was quite pleased and almost proud to feel, as it carried out every necessity of her position—“which will feel like home.”

“In every way, I hope, my dear child,” said Mrs. Bland, with a sob, enfolding Janet in her arms and her white shawl, which were both motherly, warm, and ample, like her heart. The vicar put his hand upon her shoulder, and patted it tenderly as she was held against his wife’s breast.

When the girl freed herself (and a dreadful thought about her hat darted into her mind as she did so, for it is so easy to crush crape) she gave a little laugh, and cried,

“You must not spoil me too much. I can’t go away crying; it would not be lucky. Dear vicar, there is one bud left in the china vase beside your study window. Do get it for me to put in my coat, and that will be the last thing, and a cheerful thing: for it is nearly time for the train, and I must go now.”

Janet kept her point, and pinned the rose to her breast, after she had given Mrs. Bland her farewell kiss, and went away, looking back smiling and waving her hand till she was out of sight from the vicarage gate.

“Bless her, she do have a spirit to keep up like that,” said the vicarage cook, who stood behind her mistress to see the last of Miss Janet.

“It’s all excitement,” said Mrs. Bland, drying her eyes. “I know she’ll break down dreadfully as soon as she gets into the railway carriage by herself.”

“Now, Janet, you are sure you would not wish me to go with you: for there is time enough yet to get a ticket, and send Mrs. Bland a message?” said the vicar, at the carriage door.

“No, no. No, indeed. It is far better to begin at once—to begin when I am not forced to do it,” said Janet. “And perhaps next time I travel alone it will be to come home, which will make everything delightful. Good-bye and, oh, thank you, thank you, a thousand times!”

“God bless you, my dear child.”

When he had said these last words, the vicar turned right round and walked away, for his eyes were full; and I am glad to say that Janet too saw his back, as for the first time he turned it upon her, through a tear. It was an old back, in a somewhat rusty black coat, and with stooping shoulders, and there was a slight quiver of emotion in it as he turned away. Poor child! poor little thing, setting out upon that world which is so cruel, which makes so small account of soft things and little things like a bit of a girl, carrying them away upon its stream, drifting them into corners, taking all the courage and the happiness out of them. “God bless her! God help her!” the vicar said within himself as he hurried away.

Janet had been deposited in a first-class carriage alone, with all her little properties carefully arranged about her. Henceforward probably she would have to travel by second or even third-class; but Mr. Bland had got her ticket for this last occasion regardless of expense, and had fee’d the guard to take care of her, and done everything for her as if she had been a princess. And I am happy to state that for the first mile or two Janet saw the familiar landscape all dilated and out of drawing through the medium of tears. They were not many, nor were they bitter, but at least they were genuine.

“Poor old vicar,” she said to herself; “poor Mrs. Bland; poor Aunt Mary——”

Even at that moment it was not herself she pitied, but those whom she left behind. She added at the end of a minute,

“Poor old doctor,” and burst into a laugh: and her heart jumped up again after its momentary sympathetic depression, and the tears dried of themselves. Her heart jumped up with a throb almost of exultation. At last she had fairly escaped—got away from the village and all the enveloping kindness and cares that had been lavished upon her.

Janet was not ungrateful any more than youth in the abstract is ungrateful, but the first sensation of freedom had something intoxicating in it! Setting out to face the world! She had been told all her life that she would have to do it some day; and though that eventuality had always been held before her as a dreadful though inevitable prospect, it had lost all its terrors as contrasted with the monotony of the village life, which she knew by heart, and all the quiet evenings and dull days in which Janet had often felt as if her young activity and energy of mind must burst the very walls of the dainty decorous cottage where it was so happy for her, so fortunate to have found a home. How often had she felt there as if she would like to take hold of the posts as Samson did, and shake it till it toppled down about her ears, not with any ill meaning, but for sheer need of movement, mischief, something to happen. To face the world! She looked it in the face with a smile of triumph and delight, as a sea-boy faces the smiling ocean that is in time to be his grave, as it had been his father’s before him.

Janet was not afraid. The world’s mine oyster. Her feeling was even more buoyant than that of the young man who goes up to London to seek his fortune, as being more entirely ignorant, visionary, and without foundation. A young man can at least amuse himself for his day, even if he is to be swept off upon the dark waters of ruin to-morrow; but a girl, a little governess, going to a house in St. John’s Wood! What amazing folly, what wonderful self-delusion, what a little dauntless, unforeboding, almost heroic heart! the ideal of a governess is very different, but Janet felt no regrets, no alarms. She was going to conquer fate. What she would have liked would have been to have had a longer journey before her, to have travelled the whole day in order to have been able to savourer her release, her freedom, the novelty of everything. She would have liked to arrive in her new sphere when it was dark, when she could only have a mysterious glimpse of the life before her, so as to save up a sensation for the next day, which would bring a full discovery of all her surroundings. But as things were she was very well content.

And then Janet began to think what sort of a person Mrs. Harwood would be. Would she be the nice sweet motherly person who sometimes in a novel took the young governess to her heart and made her feel at home at once? Janet almost hoped not, for that would be too easy, too commonplace and unexciting—to go from one kind home to another, and find everything made smooth for her on every side. Or would she be the purse-proud rich woman who would consider the governess as beneath her notice, with a footman who would ask “Any name?” as was done to Tom Pinch in “Chuzzlewit” when he went to look after his sister. Foolish Janet, in the exuberance of her life and untried power, thought it would be “rather fun” to have to do with such a specimen of the employer. She felt with delight that she would be able to hold her own, that no person of the kind should overcome her, and that the fight would be rather exhilarating than otherwise. Or would she perhaps be a fine lady, too fine to be rude, who would take as little notice as possible of the young stranger, ignore her existence, and consider her only as a medium to grind a little knowledge into her children? All of these types Janet had beheld in veracious fiction, which holds the mirror up to nature: which of them should she encounter? She was not afraid of any, but the consciousness that a battle of one kind or other would soon declare itself gave excitement to her mind and light to her eye.

There were several other points in which Janet, I fear, took the vulgar and superficial view. She felt with an instinctive certainty that the men of the house, if there were any, would be on her side, and that the visitors who ought to admire the young lady of the house would probably find the governess more attractive. She had an expectation, almost going the length of a certainty, that she would be fallen in love with by two or more very eligible persons at the least, and that whenever she was visible in the room, and, most of all, if she were conspicuously neglected, the eye of “the gentlemen” would pick her out, and that they would make flattering comparisons between her and the other young ladies in a happier position, and comment upon the feminine spite and jealousy that kept her in the background. This she considered to be one of the recognized certainties of her future existence, and that assurance of being preferred and vindicated gave her a great deal of pleasure. But to do her justice this conviction did not occupy a very great part of her thoughts.

Thus Janet rattled on through all the brightest hours of the day towards her fate.

CHAPTER III.

It was between three and four in the afternoon when Janet arrived at her destination. She knew London well enough as country young ladies know it—the parks and Belgravia, Piccadilly and the exhibitions; but St. John’s Wood was as unknown to her as if it had been a country town in the depths of the shires. She thought it looked like a country town as she drove along the quiet road between garden walls with trees looking over them, and stopped at the door in the wall which was all the entrance.

That it had no carriage entrance was rather a trouble to the young people in the house, but they had been used to it all their lives. The door when it was opened showed a paved line of pathway to the house, covered by a light permanent awning, supported on slight iron pillars, which were covered by strong climbing roses, now almost bare of leaves. The house door was also open, and showed rather a pleasant vista, for the red of the setting sun was in a long window at the back of the house, and lighted up an old-fashioned hall and winding staircase with a warm and comfortable light. Janet had all her wits about her, though her heart was beating loudly in her ears. She noted that it was only a parlor-maid who came to the door, with momentary discouragement—but was slightly relieved when a man came round the corner of the house to take her boxes. These perceptions and variations of feeling occurred in about a minute of time, during which she paid her cabman, and turned to follow the parlor-maid into the house. The garden looked pleasant and sheltered within its walls, and there was still a scent of late mignonette in the air of the November afternoon, though scarcely any mignonette was left at Clover. Janet walked in with her firm little step, not at all bold, but neither was she abashed. She had come now to a very critical moment, and was about to have her first look at fate.

If this was fate, it was not alarming. The room into which she was shown was evidently one which occupied the whole breadth of the house, though it was divided unequally by a large curtained doorway, through which, where the curtains hung open, came the same gleam of red sunset color which had lighted up the hall. But it was twilight in the other end to which Janet was introduced, except for a bright circle of firelight coming from an old-fashioned high grate of glimmering steel and brass, which threw forth the most brilliant reflections, and made all the shadows warm. By its side sat an old lady in a large chair—that is, a lady whom Janet took to be very old, with white hair, a white cap, and a white shawl over her shoulders, a very pleasing piece of light and suggested color, in the pleasant gloom.

“Is it Miss Summerhayes?” said this lady, in a soft voice, holding out her hand. “Gussy! My dear, I am very glad to see you, though I scarcely can see you in this faint light. Don’t think me rude for not getting up. The fact is I can’t get up, except with difficulty. Gussy! Priscilla, call Miss Gussy and Miss Julia; tell them I want them at once, and give Miss Summerhayes a chair. Come near the fire, you must be cold after your journey. It’s grown very cold this afternoon, don’t you think?”

“Oh, no,” said Janet, whose heart had stopped that unnecessary racket, and dropped down quite comfortably into its usual place of beating. “It is not so cold at all; it looks so warm and cheerful here.”

“Do you think so, my dear?” cried the old lady; “indeed, I am very glad to hear you say so, and it is a pretty thing to say. I fancied everything would be dismal to you, your first coming out into the world. Oh, here is Gussy at last. Gussy, this is Miss Summerhayes.”

Janet could not well make out the appearance of the figure which came out quickly from within the curtained doorway, and held out a hand to her. The daughter of the house was taller than herself, very slim, clothed in a dress rather too light for the season, and with hair which seemed very light also. She, too, had a soft, long hand which clasped Janet’s lightly, and a soft voice, which said, “I am very glad to see you.” Altogether, a more genial pleasant welcome could not have been desired.

“Miss Summerhayes thinks it is not at all cold and that we look very warm and cheerful,” said Mrs. Harwood, “which is very nice of her, and I hope she will always find us cheerful and comfortable, Gussy. Where is your sister? for after all she must want most to see Ju.”

“Don’t trouble about Ju all at once, mamma,” said Miss Gussy, “there is plenty of time, and we are just going to have tea. Won’t you take off your boa, Miss Summerhayes? Mamma’s room is always too warm, I think. Have you had a long journey? We could not quite make out how far it was.”

“Only since twelve o’clock,” said Janet; “it is not so very far.”

“Gussy! the poor child can have had no proper lunch. Tell Priscilla to bring some sandwiches with the tea.”

“Oh, no, please! I have had sandwiches and everything I could want. I came from the kindest friends, who could never do enough for me,” said Janet. She felt, and was pleased with herself for feeling, that at thought of the kind vicar and his wife a little water had come into her eyes.

“Well, that is very pleasant to know of,” said Mrs. Harwood. “I always like to hear that people with whom I am connected have kind friends, for those who have very kind friends are generally nice themselves; and it is a great quality to be able to appreciate kindness. I am sorry to hear that you are an—an orphan, Miss Summerhayes.”

“Yes,” said Janet, “but I must not claim too much sympathy on that account, for I have never known anything different. I have been an orphan all my life.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Harwood, slightly checked in the flow of ready feeling. “But you have lost a—a—dear relation; a—a—some one who has filled up the place?”

“I have lost the dear lady whom I lived with always. She was my mother’s cousin, but she let me call her my aunt. Nobody could be more good. I shall be grateful to her as long as ever I live,” said Janet, with a little emotion.

“My dear, I hope I have not recalled painful recollections; but one always likes to know. It is very pretty what you say about this good lady. Still, it is not the same thing as losing your mother, and I hope you will soon be able to look at things more cheerfully,” said Mrs. Harwood, feeling that this was a little out of the regular course, and not knowing what to say.

The tea had been apparently in the course of being carried in to the other end of the room while this conversation was going on, for there was a jingle of china and teaspoons, and a little movement of furniture, and a figure flitting across the opening from time to time. When this point had been reached a faint glow of light suddenly sprang up behind the curtains, and Gussy appeared once more.

“Are you going through your examination, Miss Summerhayes? We all have to do it—but mamma might have let you off for a little. Come into this room and have some tea. It is not so warm here. I’ll bring you yours directly, mamma.”

“Attend to the traveller first,” said the kind old lady, and Janet followed Gussy into the other room, where there was a lamp burning. The end of this room seemed all window, an ample bay, almost to the ground, though tempered by the shade of a veranda outside. The glow in the west had just died away, the definite contrasted domestic light came in. In the shining of this, which was reflected in a large mirror over the mantelpiece, and another opposite to it, Janet saw what Miss Harwood was like. She was very fair, hair scarcely more than flaxen, eyes blue but somewhat pale, soft features not too correct, with a little droop and sway of her tall figure when she moved which was not without grace, and suggested the soft swaying of a tall flower in the air, though matter-of-fact people regarded it sometimes as a sign of weakness. She drew a chair near the tea-table for Janet, and poured out tea for her, and pressed all the good things on the table upon her acceptance—then disappeared for a moment to the other side of the curtain to take her share of these good things to her mother. Janet, with her quick ears, heard the whispered conversation between them which was only half put into words. “Yes, I like her”—“Don’t make too much”—“You are a nice one to say so, mamma!” This last phrase was distinct enough, and Janet with a smile acknowledged its truth. She also recognized the perfect justice of the observation, “Don’t make too much of her”—which, of course, was what had been said. No; it would be foolish really to make too much of her. She felt like a young lady coming on a visit—not in the least like a little governess without friends, arriving among strangers, to a new life. If this was all which was meant by going out to seek her fortune—going out to meet her fate!

Gussy came back and sat down and began to talk to the new-comer.

“This is where I always sit,” she said, “and where our visitors come, unless when they are mamma’s great friends. Mamma is not very strong, but it is only right to admit that she is lazy and won’t try to get up out of her chair.”

At this a voice came from the other side of the curtain, slightly affected by the fact that the mouth was full.

“Don’t forget, Gussy, that I hear every word you say.”

“Oh! I know that very well, mamma. She has had rheumatism, and she is stout, and she is lazy—oh, not in any other way; neither in talking, nor in working, nor in thinking. She manages everything at home, and she will be quite willing to manage all your affairs if you wish it; but she is lazy about moving. She won’t walk——”

“Gussy, how unkind, when you know I can’t!”

“That is all a delusion, Miss Summerhayes: but we need not discuss it. She has to be wheeled about in her chair, and nothing but a visit from the Queen will make her get out of it. Now we’ve disposed of mamma, I won’t say anything about myself, for you are forming your opinion of me all the while, as I talk. I don’t think I am very hard to get on with; but we must tell you, and that is the chief point of all, that the most difficult of the family is Ju.”

“And Ju is——?” said Janet.

“Of course your pupil. She is fourteen, and she is as obstinate as a pig. We can do nothing with her, mamma and I—it is not that there is any harm in her. Perhaps if we did not think so much about it things would go better; but we think, and we consult, and we compare notes, and end by worrying ourselves very much—at least mamma worries herself. We hope that some one quite new, whom she is not accustomed to, who is a novelty to her, and whom she must be civil to, will produce quite a different effect.”

Janet felt a little thrill run over her at this description.

“I hope you know,” she said, somewhat faintly; “I hope Mr. Bland told you—that I have really no experience at all.”

“We think that is all the better,” said Gussy. “She is up to all the ways of the experienced people. We don’t like to say anything against governesses, but they run very much in grooves, like most other people, for that matter. Now you are not professional at all; you have not got into any of their dodges. Oh, don’t say anything, mamma; I must use the handiest word. You are just a girl, like any of us: I don’t see how she can be nasty with you—at least not at first,” said Gussy, reflectively, “and by the time she is familiar enough to begin her tricks we hope you will have got an ascendancy.”

Miss Harwood stopped for a moment and listened.

“Hush! don’t look as if we had been talking in particular; she is coming.”

Janet did not know what to expect. She listened, thinking of the whoop and crash of some young savage; but there was nothing of the kind, and she gave a little start in the most spontaneous manner, and rose up quickly, when Gussy said, in her soft voice:

“My sister Julia—Miss Summerhayes.”

CHAPTER IV.

She was a tall girl, taller than Janet, but considerably less so than her sister, with a well-knit and active figure, clad in the shapeless garments which are considered appropriate to her age, a great mane of light brown hair falling on her shoulders, and a pair of gray eyes, which were not soft like Gussy’s, nor with any tone of blue in them; but with a glimmer of that yellow light which makes gray eyes fierce. Her eyebrows were slightly puckered, giving a keen arch over her eyes, to which this gave (when one was looking for it) a look of repression, a hint of a possible blaze and spring. But otherwise there was no sign in Miss Julia of anything out of the way or alarming. She thrust out a hot hand to Janet, said “How d’ye do?” because she could not help herself, accepted without any thanks her tea from her sister, and retired at once to the background. Gussy gave a significant look to Janet, and elevated her eyebrows; but the new-comer saw nothing remarkable in the drawing back of the half-grown, shy girl who established herself at a table, ingenuously set up an open book, which she had apparently brought in with her, so that she could read while she consumed her cake and bread and butter, and made herself comfortable in a way which Janet envied, but did not feel herself called upon to disapprove. To-morrow, perhaps, when she was the governess in charge—but at present her mind was still free of any responsibility. A certain restraint, however, seemed to fall upon the conversation after the entrance of Julia. The very monologue of Gussy, the little chirp of protest from the other side of the curtain did not seem so free. They asked Janet a few questions about her journey, which had been inconsiderable, which was absolutely so unimportant, and then it was suggested she might like to go upstairs.

It was evident that the Harwoods intended to be very good to their governess, for she found a pretty room, well furnished and warm with firelight, awaiting her—a better room than had been hers at Rose Cottage, or even in the vicarage.

“I hope you will be comfortable, and I hope you will like us,” said Miss Harwood, as she left her.

Janet sat down in a comfortable chair by the fire. She felt very comfortable, in a state of pleasant exhilaration, but also with a faint consciousness of having had, so to speak, the ground cut from under her feet. If this was what it was to go out governessing, what was the meaning of all the fables which she had been told from her childhood? From Jane Eyre, to the Family Herald, they had all been in one tale—there had been compensations of an exciting character, no doubt, always, or almost always—but never a reception like this. She laughed to herself as she sat and watched the firelight dancing in the mirror over the mantelpiece, and in the dressing-glass on the table. Quite as nice as coming on a visit, in short, just the same, though perhaps had she come on a visit she would not have been at once and so fully taken into the family concerns of her hosts. At the same time there was a trifling disappointment in Janet’s little soul. She had fully intended to conquer fate, to make a brilliant fight, to come out triumphant and victorious more than words could say. And to find that there was nothing to fight about, that all was to be easy and agreeable, every authority on her side, and circumstances in her favor—took the wind out of her sails, to change the metaphor. It brought a little ridicule into the whole matter. To think that she had been so screwing up her courage, fortifying herself, and that her heart had beat so high, and that she had walked into this new world with such a determined little step, as if she were marching to military music, with her colors flying and her bugle sounding, all to fall into a lap of luxury, to be received with open arms and almost caresses at the last!

In course of time, however, Janet reminded herself that instead of being the last, this after all was only the very first of her new experiences. Mrs. Harwood might turn out to be very different from the amiable and jocular old lady she appeared at first. Gussy, instead of being the nicest of fair-haired girls, might develop the falseness and treachery which some people thought went with that complexion. Other complications might arise. And then there was Ju.

Ah! Ju! Janet felt a little injured, wounded in her pride, when that consideration suddenly came in and thrust itself upon her. She had anticipated a great many evils, but she had never thought that to master an unruly girl taller than herself would be the chief or the first feature of her warfare. It was almost ludicrous to think of Ju, that child, in her short petticoats and flying hair, as a synonym of fate. Janet had been accustomed to be the favorite of the children wherever she went. The little ones had always liked her, gathered about her, petitioned her to tell them stories, to sing them some of her funny songs, to make up games for them. She was famous in Clover and for quite twelve miles round for this quality. “Delightful with children!” that was what was said of her. And in looking forward upon the future she had never taken into account any difficulty in that respect. The difficulties she had expected had been in (perhaps) the exacting and unjust mother, (perhaps) the jealous and spiteful girl, (perhaps) the undue admiration of the male persons about, and their universal feeling that the governess was much better worth looking at and talking to than the ladies of the house.

These are the difficulties chiefly set forth in novels, and, after all, it was from novels that Janet derived her chief conceptions of life. But a struggle with a wayward pupil had not occurred to her as one of her possible trials. After all, to look at it impartially, it was a not unnatural difficulty. She ought to have considered it one of the things most likely to happen, but it was a poor unromantic difficulty with nothing at all spirit-stirring in it. To wrestle in spirit with a naughty girl, to fight for obedience, for nice manners, for lessons learnt! Oh dear, oh dear! These were no doubt things as distinctly belonging to a governess’s business as her grammar or her book of marks—but Janet had not taken them into account, and they seemed disappointing and ignoble trifles after the things for which she was prepared.

The dinner was good; the table was nicely served. It was apparent that the Harwoods were not people of yesterday. Their silver was heavy and old, marked not with a crest, but with a solemn “H,” as a family perhaps not deeply acquainted with fantastic trophies of heraldry, but extremely conscious of the credit of their name. And everything shone and sparkled with that nicety of good usage which is never more perceptible than in those well-to-do English houses were splendor is never aimed at.

Mrs. Harwood was wheeled in in her chair, and, now that Janet could see her, proved to be a pretty old lady, rather different from her daughters, not, indeed, a similar type at all—a woman with lively dark eyes and warm tones of color in her complexion, and, even in her crippled condition, much more active in her movements than her eldest daughter at least. They had all dressed for dinner, according to that all-prevailing English practice which no other country knows—Gussy, in a pretty blue dress, which lent a little animation to her extreme fairness; Julia, in a white frock; even Mrs. Harwood, in a changed cap and shawl. How strange it was to sit down in the midst of this unaccustomed company, amid all these unknown surroundings, in one’s mourning—a little black figure unlike any of them, yet one of the family! It gave Janet once more a thrill of novel sensation that ran all over her. She sat opposite to the mirror which was over the mantelpiece (there were mirrors over all the mantelpieces), and as it was tilted forward a little Janet could see herself, which gave her much amusement and encouragement. She looked very different from all the rest in her black frock. The second time she looked she had a vague perception that certainly she looked no worse than the rest—perhaps, better. At all events, there is no harm in being consoled about your appearance and feeling that you are no worse than the people about you. Janet felt disposed to have an occasional laugh and pleasant little remark now and then between herself and the little girl in black opposite to her in the glass. Somehow she liked the looks of that little thing the best.

And the talk flowed on, all through dinner and afterwards in Mrs. Harwood’s room, where they sat after dinner round the twinkling fireplace, all made of shining brass and steel. How it shone and twinkled and reflected every flame, and threw off glimmers of concentrated light! The mother was wheeled back to her usual place. Gussy took up her position by a screen on the other side, and Julia and Miss Summerhayes found their places between. This nomenclature had been adopted at once, to Janet’s great amazement. It was as if a partnership had been made which nobody could interfere with. Mrs. Harwood and her elder daughter were distinct personalities, but the other pair were Ju and Miss Summerhayes.

“It ought to be Miss Summerhayes and Ju,” said Gussy, “but it does not run so well. One can’t end off well with a ridiculous little syllable. This is where I always sit, and you must find a place according to what you like best. We live very quietly, partly because mamma will not get out of that chair.”

“Can’t, Gussy. Don’t let Miss Summerhayes form such a bad opinion of your mother.”

“Miss Summerhayes will form her own opinion quickly enough. I only give her a sketch of the circumstances. This is how we are night after night, often the whole winter through. It ought to be very dull, and it must look very dull to you, but, somehow, we are hardened, and don’t feel it, except when Dolff is at home. When Dolff is at home, we ought to tell you, Miss Summerhayes, that there are sometimes a few parties—dinner parties, not very interesting, friends of the family; and on those occasions—it is better to say it to Miss Summerhayes just at once, without waiting till the time comes—don’t you think, mamma?”

“Miss Summerhayes has so much sense. I am sure she will understand the size of the room and all that sort of thing,” said Mrs. Harwood.

“Just so. I was sure you would think it best. It is just this, that when Dolff is at home and there are dinners, sometimes we may be unable to ask you to make one, Miss Summerhayes.”

“Oh, is that all!” said Janet. She laughed with almost a little relief, for she had not known what she might be about to be told. “I did not expect even to dine downstairs,” she said. “I was told a governess never did. Mrs. Bland told me all I should have to do—to dine at two with my pupil, perhaps to come in to afternoon tea, then to disappear upstairs and be seen no more. The vicar and she are saying to each other at present: ‘Now Janet will be feeling very lonely. She will be finding out what a solitary evening is.’ Dear people! I wish they could only see me now.”

“Yes,” said the old lady; “and all you say, my dear, about them, and about your arrival and everything, is very pretty. But your friends were really quite right, for that is usually the case when a—young lady—is in a family in this way. For you know every family has its own ways—and—and a person, a lady who is not acquainted with them may be—well, made uncomfortable, or the others may be obliged to stop speaking with freedom when she is there. It does not matter among us, who are all ladies together—and no secrets to discuss. But occasionally, my dear, when my son is at home, or when circumstances require it—you won’t think it means any unkindness?—but we are obliged to recur to ordinary rules—for a few days—for a little while—perhaps only for two or three times. It is just a sort of necessity. We can’t help ourselves. I always think it easier to explain everything and set everything on a simple footing at once.”

This was a very long speech for Mrs. Harwood to make, and Janet strove to interrupt her a dozen times, to declare that she understood and that no explanations were necessary. But it came to an end at last, and the old lady pushed back her chair a little, and made a slight flourish with her handkerchief, in the satisfaction of having relieved her mind. Gussy immediately took up the parole without a pause.

“You said ‘Janet,’ Miss Summerhayes—what a nice little prepossessing natural name to have! Do you know what we are called, the unfortunate members of this family? Oh, I see, she can scarcely keep from laughing, mamma.”

“I! no, indeed; my name is dreadful, like a Scotch housemaid; everybody says so,” said Janet, in some trouble, not knowing what was coming next.

“Wait till you know. I am Augusta, which is Minerva Press of the finest water. And that poor child is Julia, and our only brother is Adolphus—conceive such a thing!—born John if ever man was; such an honest countenance, no pretension about it, and Adolphus put on him like a pinchbeck coronet. It is too bad. Mamma denies any responsibility. She says it was all my father’s fault.”

“I say,” said Mrs. Harwood, “that it was the family—don’t blame your poor father. The Harwoods were always queer, and it was they who liked those grand names.”

“You call them grand! I have to sink to Gussy, and she to Ju, and Dolff, poor boy! did you ever hear a more miserable thing for a name? Dolff! There is nothing in it, neither meaning nor sense. I know he would come home a great deal happier if he were Jack.”

“What can the boy’s name have to do with his happiness?” cried Mrs. Harwood, testily, pushing back her chair a little more.

“If he were in a more exalted sphere he would be called Dolly,” said his sister, sadly. “Dolly! imagine, a man’s name!—Now if we had been born in mamma’s time we would have been Mary and Elizabeth and John—how much better! Or we might be, had mamma insisted on being in the fashion, Dorothy and Mabel and Harold: not bad, though perhaps a little artificial. But Augusta, Julia, and Adolphus! Can you wonder, Miss Summerhayes, that we are all sometimes on the eve of rebellion, and if mamma was not really so good might be tempted even to assault her, though she declares it was not her fault?”

“Ju,” said Mrs. Harwood, “get up and read by the lamp. The firelight, I am always telling you, will destroy your eyes.”

Julia was stretched out on the carpet with a book laid out close by the gleaming, dazzling fire. She had her head supported in her hands, and had not moved or shown any sign of life while this conversation was going on. She took not the smallest notice of what her mother said.

“Ju,” said Gussy, “do you know that your hair will be ruined in that heat? Nurse is always complaining it is scorched off your head.”

“And that is why you have such dreadful headaches. Get up and sit at the table beside Miss Summerhayes.

But Ju neither moved nor spoke.

CHAPTER V.

It is one of the most curious sensations of modern life to find one’s self engulfed in a new family, wrapped round and round by novel circumstances, made, momentarily, to feel as if the centre of the world had somehow changed, and its most important features were now the peculiarities of a single race, or even of a small division of that race. People who hurry through visit after visit, it is probable, do not feel this amusing change in the direction of all things which takes place when an unsophisticated spirit suddenly leaves its own small centre, where the revolution of the planets has been round some well-known local or domestic sun, and plunges into another, where the forces are all the other way, and a circle of completely novel phenomena comes into sight. Janet, who still felt as if she were a young lady visitor come from one star to another to discover a new life, went upstairs that evening wrapped up in Harwoodism penetrated with a new flavor, feeling these new figures of Gussy, Ju, and Dolff, Augusta, Julia and Adolphus, one of whom was as yet entirely in the mists—and the ludicrous family grievance of their names, and their unaccustomed ways of living, and the blaze of firelight, and the comfort, and the sober limits of their life, surrounded apparently by the garden wall, and extending no farther—to turn her round and round, absorbing her own individuality into theirs. It seemed quite impossible to believe, when she reached her own room, and found herself alone, that she had left a totally different world that morning, and indeed, up to half-past three in the afternoon, had never heard of Gussy, or Ju, or Dolff, or known that such persons existed. Janet sat down to think it all over in her comfortable arm-chair by her blazing fire. Surely there never had been such fires. Her own grate was old-fashioned, too, bright brass, which reflected the flames and the glow of red-hot combustion, with which it played with a brilliancy which seemed to redouble the heat: the whole room was full of the leaping light, in the midst of which two white candles burned pale, like quite unnecessary things. Gussy and Ju, and Dolff—Dolff, Gussy, and Ju, their names made a sing-song in her head as the ruddy light darted and dazzled in her eyes. It was not even as if she had begun to speculate on the effect upon herself and her own life which these new surroundings would have. It was simply that she was enveloped in them, swallowed up, feeling it almost impossible to believe that there was still room in the world for Clover and such places, with their old-fashioned interests. When she tried to think of the vicarage, it had become like a faded old photograph to her mind—far away, at least a year, if not an age beyond anything she could recall. The new centre of the world was in St. John’s Wood. And all the air was filled with circling reflections and echoes of Gussy, Dolff, and Ju.

This rhyme was the first thing that came into her mind in the morning when she sprang up a little confused, not quite sure where she was. But Janet was now as fresh as the morning, having shaken off her youthful superficial fatigue, and feeling quite ready for a more reasonable view of her new surroundings. The garden upon which she looked out was getting into trim winter order, though the lawn was still liable to renewed showers of falling leaves, and the late mignonette all weedy and straggling along with long shoots of nasturtiums and heads of geraniums, disorderly with decay, were still lingering in the borders. Some tall trees at the end lent a respectable background to the broad but closely-enclosed space with the very visible boundary of its brick walls. It all looked bright in the misty ruddy sunshine of the November morning. The gardener was moving about at his work, a boy after him, trundling a little wheelbarrow, with weeds and rubbish: the most familiar sights and sounds in the hazy morning air. The new world had thus some points of junction with the old, which made it look more real, not so much like a story. Janet felt her heart jump to meet the new day. She was going to be exceedingly comfortable at least, and amused at first, even if it should be a little dull after. But perhaps it would not even be dull. She herself would have something to say to that—and it is impossible to tell at twenty in what unsuspected circumstances “fun” may be lurking. It is one of the inextinguishable elements in life always to be found in one corner or another.

Janet did not make this reflection in so many words, but she was more keenly alive to the fact than is her historian; and with this confidence went down to breakfast, when Gussy met her with all the kind greetings possible. The breakfast-table was quite brilliant to behold, with a silver tea-urn of old-fashioned form, silver tea-pot, coffee-pot, a glitter of silver everywhere: and so well kept! and so heavy and respectable! with such an air of sober, modest, consciously undemonstrative comfort and wealth!

Gussy’s dress was still too light for Janet’s taste, being an exceedingly pale gray, which was not very becoming to a person with so little color; but she looked as nice, and purled forth her soft speeches just as on the night before. One thing she said, however, which was of more importance than all these friendly purlings, gave Janet the first touch of the real in this mild domestic elysium. She put out her long soft hand from behind the urn, and laid it on Janet’s arm.

“Before she appears, just one word, Miss Summerhayes. Please strike your blow at once.”

“What blow?” asked Janet, amazed.

“To get the upper hand of Ju. You are quite a novelty; she does not know you at all. You might startle her into submitting, if you took advantage of the circumstances. Don’t ask anything unreasonable of her, but never give in when you have insisted on anything. Don’t let her beat you. She’s coming down now; I can’t say any more. And there’s really no more to say. Never let her win the day.”

These words tingling in her ears gave Janet the strangest little shock, like the sudden touch of an electric battery, in the midst of the comfort and quiet. She could scarcely keep from jumping up, starting out of her seat. Her black sleeve, when Gussy took her long fingers from it, seemed to give out sparks. To strike a blow, to win a battle, never to allow herself to be beat. What curious words in this absolutely quiet and ordinary domestic calm?

Ju came in with a nod to Miss Summerhayes, and said nothing at all while she despatched her breakfast. But then Gussy was talking all the time, and there was not much room for anyone else. She was certainly a most self-absorbed young person; but, save her silence and that acute small curve over each eyebrow, caused by a sort of permanent frown, there seemed nothing else to alarm a stranger.

Janet’s heart still beat more quickly than before, but she gradually got more calm, and assured herself there could be no real danger. In some families all the molehills are made into mountains, and perhaps that was the case here.

It was with a little excitement, however, that Janet walked into the school-room, which she found communicated with her own room by a short passage, and which occupied a corner of the house with one window to the garden and another in the other wall, from which a view could be obtained into the outer world, meaning in this case the exceedingly quiet suburban road between two lines of garden walls which had reminded Janet of a country town. The young governess of twenty came into this room, which was still in the shadow, though expectant of a gleam of sunshine from the south when the sun should have made a little more progress, with some excitement, of which, however, she was able to conceal the signs. It gave a brightness to her eyes and a little thrill to her upper lip, but that was all. She had not the least idea of what she was going to encounter. The young knight in the story of the Sleeping Beauty was not more ignorant, nor was she at all sure that she knew how to fight, or had the coolness and the courage necessary for an important encounter. With a child of fourteen! she tried to say to herself with a laugh. But, after all, twenty is not so very far elevated over fourteen, and the child was taller and almost more developed than the woman. It was at ten o’clock that lessons were to begin, and at ten minutes to ten Janet opened the school-room door. Mystery and expectation made her heart beat. She stepped in once more, feeling the thrill as of an electric machine; and her breathing was slightly affected, though she would not show it. She had almost feared she would find emptiness, which would have been the most embarrassing of all, for how fight when your opponent does not show? But, fortunately, Julia was already there. This was what Janet found: a table set out in the middle of the room, with books and writing things, all in good order; the piano open at the back, with music upon it. Meanwhile, at the south window, seated at another table, with both her elbows resting upon it as if riveted to the mahogany—Julia, her head supported on her hands, a book lying open before her, in precisely the same attitude in which she had lain on the previous night scorching her head in the heat and blaze of the fire.

Janet stood for a moment looking at her pupil with an internal shiver. Her pupil—to whom she was not at all sure of being able to teach anything—whom in any circumstances she would have felt an alarmed respect for, as a being probably destined to find her out, and expose her little pretences. Julia remained like a statue, immovable, not turning to see who had come in according to weak mortal usage, far too strong in the instincts of rebellion and individuality for any such betrayal of weakness. Miss Summerhayes then moved a little about the room—looked at the music, took up the books on the table, glanced out from the window. Ten o’clock had not yet struck. She finally went and seated herself in the chair placed for her, and waited until the ten tiny strokes, tingling from the clock on the mantelpiece, had been answered by all the church towers in the neighborhood. Then there came an awful moment.

“Julia, it is time for lessons.”

Janet heard her own voice falter, but the tremor was not audible to any listener. Julia did not move nor reply.

“I am waiting to begin lessons,” Janet repeated more sharply, after a moment.

Dead silence—not by the merest quiver of movement did Julia betray that she had heard.

“It is ten o’clock, and I am waiting to begin lessons. Julia!”

Julia sat like a figure of wood or stone.

Miss Janet Summerhayes rose from her chair, pale, with her eyes shining. Her little temper came to her aid. The fun disappeared. The moment of conflict had come.

CHAPTER VI.

Janet had as pretty a little temper of her own as you could meet anywhere. It flashed up in a moment into her eyes. No one, schoolgirl or otherwise, was likely to get a cheap bargain of this little governess. She rose, and, turning the key in the door as she passed, walked up to the table at which Miss Julia sat with her book. The girl was not aware that her own absolute immovability proved to her antagonist that she was not absorbed in her book but in the battle which had begun. Miss Summerhayes stood opposite to her for a moment looking down upon Julia’s bent head. She felt the key of the door in her pocket, which, perhaps, was rather a desperate step so early in the fight; as in doing this she had at once burnt her ships, and committed herself to a policy of absolute no-surrender; but still it inspired her, for she could now neither draw back nor temporize.

“Julia! I have told you three times that it is ten o’clock, and I am waiting to begin lessons.”

There was still not a movement, not a sound. Julia sat as if made of stone. Then Janet made the great coup she had been contemplating. With a sudden swift movement she took the book from under the reader’s bent face, closed it, and carried it away. In a moment Julia was erect, getting to her feet with a bound, her gray eyes dilating into great globes of gold, her spring like that of a tiger. Janet had scarcely time, though her movements were very quick, to get back to the shelter of her arm-chair. But she managed to do so, and to lock up the offending volume in a drawer, with Julia’s grip on her shoulder, and a shriek of “How dare you, how dare you!” ringing in her ears.

“Miss Summerhayes! give me back my book. How dare you take my book? Give it me this moment—do you hear me! do you hear me!” cried the girl, passionately, holding Janet’s shoulders in a grasp of steel.

“I hear you perfectly well—as you heard me just now. Take your hands from my shoulders. I did not touch you; if we are to fight, let us fight fair.”

Julia’s hands dropped, and a shade of consternation came over her eyes. Then she stamped her foot violently upon the floor—“Miss Summerhayes, give me back my book?”

“Sit down,” said Janet, not uncheerfully, “and we can have it out.”

“Give me back my book!”

“Well,” said Janet, “now we have both got through that formula, trois sommations—though I am afraid not very respectueuses. Do you know what that means? I called you three times and you have called me three times. We are equal, so far. Now sit down and let us talk it out.”

“Equal!” said Julia, with a shriek, “me and you, Miss Summerhayes! You are only the governess—that’s no better than a servant. You may suppose they think different downstairs, because of their way of talking, and because Gussy thinks it’s grand to be like that. But they think just the same. And mamma will stand up for me. She pretends she wants me to be mastered, but she doesn’t, and you’ll find the difference when you go to her with your complaints.”

“But I don’t mean to go to her with any complaints,” said Janet, putting on the best smile she could. “If we are to get on, we must manage it between ourselves; if not, there is a very easy remedy for me. You had better sit down, and discuss the matter, so that we may know what we are about.”

“What’s your remedy?” cried Julia, breathing hard.

“It will be quite effectual, as far as I am concerned: but I don’t like to be beaten, so I shall try some others first. Sit down there.”

“I shan’t,” Miss Julia said.

“Well, stand on your head then,” said Janet, “perhaps you may like that better: only let us get all the necessary tricks over, and come to business, for it may as well be decided once for all.”

“How dare you talk of tricks! What do you call my tricks?”

“They are quite easy to describe. To pretend to be deaf, dumb, and blind; to pretend to be a wild beast; to shriek and snort and talk loud. I don’t know what others you may still have to get through, but you must know as well as I do that all these are tricks, and of no consequence. When they are exhausted, then we can begin to talk.”

“Me a wild beast! Me of no consequence! I should like,” cried Julia, with her eyes blazing like red-hot flames, and her fingers clasping and unclasping, “just to give it you hot, for once! just to stamp upon you, and tear off your fal-lals and pitch you out of the window!”

Janet nodded her head at each threat, not by way of approbation, but of acquiescence as in an argument she had foreseen.

“I know,” she said, “I told you so. It would be a great saving of time if you would consider all that sort of thing as said, and come to the real question.”

“What is the real question?” said Julia, staring, with her hands grasping the top of the chair on which she had been requested to sit down—whether because she was checked in her childish rage, or whether because she meant to use it as a weapon, it was difficult to say.

“The real question is, whether we are to be able to get on together or not. It’s the only one of any importance. I want to come to that.”

“What an awful fool you must be,” said Julia, bending over the back of the chair towards Janet with flaming looks of wrath.

“Yes,” said Janet. “One of us is so, that is very evident: but why should it strike you at this moment?”

“To think that it isn’t settled already, to think I would ever give in to you for a moment. Knuckle under! me! Oh! you think you can come over me with smiling, when you are in as blue a funk—— You, a bit of a governess hired just like the housemaid: and that’s exactly what mamma will say.”

Janet yawned a little in the girl’s furious face, a gentle little yawn which did not at all distort her own countenance.

“My poor child,” she said, “if you would only consider that I understand all that, and that we’d so much better come to business! You can’t frighten me, and though, of course, you can insult me, that’s of equally little use, for I don’t care.”

“Because you’re used to it,” cried Julia.

“No—once only before. It was a tramp on the road, an old woman, and I would not give her any money. It is curious to think where you can have learned the same sort of thing—brought up, I suppose, more or less like a lady—but it must be in the blood.”

“Do you mean to say I’m not a lady—you—? Oh-h!” for Janet had gently shrugged those little shoulders which still felt the young fury’s grip. “I’ll go,” cried Julia, fiercely, “I’ll go this moment and tell mamma.”

Janet sat quietly in her chair awaiting the discovery of the locked door, and somewhat alarmed lest there should ensue a physical struggle which would be undignified and unladylike. Then followed a whirlwind of noise, stamping, shrieking, and wild talk.

“Give me the key! Open the door! I want to go to mamma. Mamma! Let me out. Let me out! I want to open the door,”—then a furious kick upon the panel. “Mamma! Gussy! I’m locked in; come, come, and open the door.”

“It is a pity that all the servants should know you are in trouble, Julia. Let it remain between you and me,” said Janet, laying her hand upon the girl’s shoulder.

“Open the door!”

“No, I shall not open the door—nor shall anyone else, if I can help it. Let this remain between you and me.”

“Mamma will send and order you to do it. Mamma! mamma! I am locked in. I can’t get out. Come and open the door!”

How it was that no one heard these outcries Janet could not imagine: but they were at the top of the house: the kitchen was thoroughly occupied with its own affairs, and Mrs. Harwood, as she found out afterwards, had been wheeled out for her morning airing, so that silence alone replied to Julia’s passionate appeals. She rushed to the window and flung it open, but the gardener was not visible in the garden. After half-an-hour of tumult, an enforced silence fell upon the school-room. But Julia was not yet overcome.

“I shall keep you here all your life—you shan’t go—not a step. If I am to be shut in, you shall be shut in too. You shall have no lunch; you shall have no tea; you shall have no dinner!” said Julia, crescendo, rising to a climax.

“Well,” said Janet, “if you think it better to put off our conversation till to-morrow, I make no objection. It will be very uncomfortable—but there are worse things than discomfort in this world. I have done without my dinner before now.”

“Yes! often, I shouldn’t wonder—when you had nobody to give you a dinner,” cried Julia.

Janet looked at the furious girl with a glance of astonishment in her eyes. She laughed a little.

“You silly child,” she said.

And then in the midst of the agitation and tumult there occurred a moment of quiet. Julia was at the end of her resources. She was worn out with her own passion, dismayed by being thus left to the tender mercies of the governess, and discouraged beyond description by the indifference and contempt of the stranger whom she had been so certain of subduing—a little thing not so big as herself, a little governess without a friend—a subject creature whom it was safe for everybody to jump upon. Julia’s experience contained no stronger picture of the governess than that of the one who ran away next morning after complaining to Mrs. Harwood that she was not accustomed to such young ladies. The others had all coaxed and cringed and endeavored to temporize.

Julia went and sat down panting at the other table, and watched this new kind of human being seated in the middle of the room as if nothing had happened, calmly writing, not a hair turned upon her head, not a bit of frill crumpled about her neck. It was natural to Janet to be neat, and her self-control was wonderful. Besides, of course she knew that she was being looked at, watched with all the keen observation of a vindictive child to see where her weakness lay. That she had supported this struggle so long without moments of weakness it would be vain to say—that she had not felt the stings and resented the blows. Her heart had beat as if it was bursting from her breast. She had felt herself trembling all over with excitement and alarm. But she had managed somehow to keep calm all along, and she was still calm now, keeping in her breath, holding herself with all her might to look indifferent. Julia’s observation was keen, but not so keen as to pierce Janet’s armour of mail. The girl sat staring at her with eyes that became less and less like orbs of flame, and more like ordinary big gray eyes with a golden glow. And Janet wrote a letter. It was the only thing she could think of to give her the support of an occupation. She wrote a narrative of what had passed, writing “Dear Mrs. Bland” at the top to give herself a countenance, though the last thing in the world she would have done was to send the vicar’s wife such a description of her first day in her new situation. She smiled, however, to herself involuntarily as she went on with her story, making it very amusing. And Julia saw her smile, and something like awe came over the exhausted spirit of the little rebel. To go through all that, one tithe of which would have broken the spirit of any other governess, and yet to smile!

After a long interval of silence, and when Janet began to wonder with some alarm how she would meet a long strain of passive resistance had Julia strength of mind to keep it up, a sudden voice once more made itself heard.

“Miss Summerhayes! the first thing I shall do when I get out of this will be to tell mamma.”

“That is exactly what I should recommend,” said Janet, looking up from her writing; “one’s mother should always know everything,” and with a little friendly nod she returned to her letter.

Julia could not tell what to think: there was more in it than her puzzled understanding had ever encountered before. After a while she said, with some hesitation, “Miss Summerhayes!” again.

“Yes,” said Janet, looking up once more.

“What did you mean about conversation? I hate you! I shall never speak to you three words if I can help it; but what did you mean about putting off the conversation? I want to know——”

“Perhaps it will be better to put it off till to-morrow.”

“I want to have it now. Conversation! as if there ever could be any between you and me.”

“That is what I have just said. It will be better to put it off,” said Janet, without raising her head, turning over the page of her supposed letter.

The next thing she heard was a stamp on the floor, suppressed so that it was scarcely a stamp, and an exclamation,

“I prefer to have it now.”

“I cannot talk to anyone so far off,” said Janet, and there was another pause.

Presently she could hear the faint rustling of a person about to get up from a chair, which went on for some time, there being an evident and great reluctance to move. Then there was a sudden plunge. Julia alighted opposite her, on the other side of the table.

“I want to know what it is—— I want to know what you want with me.”

Janet sat up, raised her head, putting down her pen.

“Honestly, and without any more preliminaries?” she said.

Julia’s eyes gave a single dart of fire.

“No one ever said I was a thief. I want to know what you want with me.”

“That is what I call honestly,” Janet replied, and she put away her writing things for the second encounter, the first having thus been successful beyond her hopes.

CHAPTER VII.

“Well,” said Janet, when she found herself looking into the blurred and flushed countenance of the passionate girl. Julia had given vent, in spite of herself, to some tears, and had dashed them away with her hand or her sleeve, leaving a smear, and her hair was hanging wildly round her face, and there was a general air of dilapidation and ruin, though accompanied by few actual signs of warfare. She ought to have torn her frock from top to bottom to justify the general aspect of affairs, but she had not done so, and the smeared cheek and the ragged hair were the only physical certainties of the conflict past. There was still a pucker over each eye, but it was not an assured and dauntless pucker. The fortunes of war, for once, had not turned the usual way.

“Well—you have been behaving like a fool, but a fool has no meaning. When one can behave like a fool with a meaning I think there must be some sense at the bottom. If I am right, nothing matters that has happened; but if I am wrong——”

Julia stared with faint comprehension and much impatience. She said—

“Don’t palaver. What do you want with me?”

Now, Janet had expected to exercise a little feminine philosophy upon the girl when she had got her in hand—a little banter, a little seriousness—to make her ashamed of herself in the first place, and then to make her see. She was taken a little aback. If she could not make her ashamed nor make her see, what was to be done? The question grew a great deal more serious thus than when it concerned only a locked door. She ran over the circumstances rapidly in her mind, and she saw it would not do to answer according as it at first occurred to her, that she (Janet) personally wanted nothing at all with Julia, except as little to do with her as might be.

“What I want is simple,” she said, with a smile. “I want to do the work I have been engaged to do, and that is to educate you for as many hours as your mother has fixed for your education. How am I to get that done? for, you may be sure, I mean to do it one way or other. I want to talk it over and discover how it is to be done.”

“I don’t want it to be done at all”

“Neither do I,” said Janet, facing the rebel bravely, and bursting into a laugh. “But if you will reflect,” she said, “that does not get us a bit further on, for it must be done. Unless it is done you will grow up like the tramp woman I was telling you of—not at all an interesting person—and I shall break my word. Now, I don’t like to break my word. You don’t care at present about becoming like a tramp, but you will later on.”

“How dare you say——”

“Julia,” said the little governess, “I dare to say anything I think proper, or to do anything, so you had better make up your mind to that at once. Such questions are silly. I am not afraid of anyone or anything.”

Janet threw back her head, which was smaller—as she was smaller in every part—than that of her tall pupil. There is nothing so fearless in life as a girl who is without fear. It is true that the kind of dauntless courage she possesses is largely made up of ignorance, and also comes a little perhaps from the conventional precautions which defend her, though she does not know it. However, the quality is absolute, and Janet had it. She feared nothing, as she said.

Julia, from under her puckered eyebrows, glared into the clear brown eyes, which had something in them like the sparkle of a Highland stream, and admired the valor which she did not possess: for she was afraid of the coercion which she was always fighting against. She stared, but she said nothing in reply.

“You see,” said Janet, “I will do what I’ve promised: and if I were you I’d say I will too. It’s much nicer than to have to say I must——”

Still Julia stared; her lips moved as if she would have spoken, but she uttered no sound.

“Downstairs,” said Janet, “they expect us to fight. I am afraid you have been so silly that they think you are a fool, and don’t understand anything about what is expected from a gentlewoman. That’s not my opinion, as I told you: but as I shall not give in, whatever you do, it would be very silly to go on fighting forever. We can make something better of it: if you will be convinced that I never shall be afraid of you—no, nor of anyone else,” Janet repeated, with the color mounting in her cheeks.

Julia continued silent for some time; then, with a sudden burst of harsh sound, asked, “What do you want of me?” and was abruptly silent again, as if a spring had been touched to give forth that voice.

“I want you to speak when you are spoken to,” said Janet.

The girl, who evidently expected something of much larger scope, cried “Oh!” but said no more.

“I want you to do as I tell you—for so many hours in the day—from ten to one, is it? That’s not very long. You can be a demon after that, if you please, and dance your war-dance.”

“What do you mean by—dancing my war-dance?”

“Behaving like a fiend, or a Red Indian, or a tramp in the roads: so long as you are in your senses from ten to one.”

Julia stared again, but made no reply.

“But you must remember,” said Janet, “that in the place I come from, where there are no Red Indians, there is a point of honor; and whatever one undertakes to do one does. If you see the sense of what I say, and give me your word, it is once and forever; not promise one day and break it the next. That is a sort of thing I don’t understand. One promises, and it is for life and death. It does not matter what comes in the way. If you were to be killed for it, it would have to be done.”

Julia stared for a few moments more, and then——

“I can see the sense of that,” she said.

“To be sure. I knew you would when you gave yourself time to look at it. Well, then, you can see that to call in other people or other considerations is of no use between you and me. At the last we should always have to talk it over between ourselves. If you like, you can make it quite easy and rather pleasant; if you don’t, I must think of some other way.”

When the hour of luncheon arrived, the respectable household in St. John’s Wood was considerably excited as to the fate of the new governess. Perhaps the servants had not been so completely out of hearing as had appeared. Perhaps some stray notes of the fray had been blown out of the open windows or conveyed through the chinks of the woodwork. At all events, there was a prevailing curiosity in the house, which became apparent almost as soon as the governess and her pupil left the shelter of those rooms in which already so many varied scenes in the life and education of Julia Harwood had taken place. Mrs. Harwood’s maid met them on the stairs, and gave Janet an inquiring look, to which the governess, you may be sure, made no reply. Half-way down they were again met by the parlor-maid, who, looking somewhat “flustered,” announced that Mrs. Harwood was afraid they might not have heard the bell.

“Oh, yes, we can hear the bell perfectly,” said Janet.

She went into the dining-room with Julia so close behind her that they formed one shadow. Mrs. Harwood’s face was turned anxiously towards the door. Gussy, more astute, had her eyes intent upon the mirror, in which everything was reflected. There was a long breath of relief drawn by both, not, perhaps, audible by any uninterested spectator, but affecting the entire atmosphere to Janet’s excited consciousness. She felt as if her triumph must be of more importance than the mere victory over a naughty child, and wondered, with a passing thrill, was there any mystery involved? But in face of the decorous, gentle household, so correct, so punctilious, which had not a fold awry, or a corner neglected in all its careful economy, it was ludicrous to think of any mystery. However, there could be no doubt that her entrance was greeted with extreme pleasure.

“Sit here, my dear Miss Summerhayes,” said the mistress of the house. “This is the warm corner; there is no draught at this side. Well, you have got over your first morning’s work. And how do you like teaching? It’s very tedious, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, not where there is intelligence and brains,” said Janet, with great composure. “Children who cannot keep up their attention are very trying; but not anyone who is old enough to understand. There has not been much teaching, however, this morning, we have been chiefly talking things over. Two strangers forced together without any mutual knowledge, I thought it best that we should understand each other first.”

This statement, which was given with the most natural air in the world, was listened to by all her audience with the most flattering interest, but perfect decorum, the only transgressor of which was the parlor-maid, from whose direction there came one or two faint muffled sounds, whether of painfully suppressed laughter, or of something giving way in the effort of controlling emotion, Janet could not tell. Gussy fixed the culprit with a glittering eye from behind the screen which sheltered her from the blazing fire, and Mrs. Harwood cast a cursory glance behind her. None of these things would have been noticed at all by a stranger who was less prepared than Janet, but she perceived everything in her own suppressed excitement. There was something amusing, however, in the comment made by the strain upon the parlor-maid’s stays.

“That is so sensible,” said Mrs. Harwood, “it is for want of getting to understand each other that so many relationships go wrong. Ju, push your chair back a little, the sun is in your face.”

Julia paid no attention to this command.

“Ju, the sun is in your face, sit nearer this way; your eye-sight will be gone before you are twenty. Child, do you hear me!” Mrs. Harwood cried.

“And her complexion: you will have none at all left, not a tint,” said Gussy, “before you come out.”

Julia did not betray by a movement that she had heard either speak, but put her head forward into a brilliant ray of sunshine which streamed across the table, so as to get the full glow upon her face. She had not much to boast of in the way of complexion. Whether it was the blaze of sunlight and firelight combined to which she loved to expose herself, or whether it was nature, her face thus brought into prominence was sallow and freckled, only relieved by the golden light in her gray eyes.

“The winter sun cannot do much harm,” said Janet, with a friendly impulse. “It makes a pretty picture.”

“Ah,” said Gussy, shaking her head, “you should have seen that child once; she had such a color. We have nothing to brag of in the way of complexion in our family, but I once thought Ju would redeem us in that respect. Alas!” and Miss Harwood shook her head.

“And did you find her very backward, Miss Summerhayes? and is there any special thing you think she is more fit for than others? I always like young people to have some particular turn. Do you remember, Gussy, how we used to try and try with Dolff to get him to say what he would like to be. But he never would take an attitude of his own. ‘Whatever you please, mother,’ he used to say.”

“That was all his goodness, mamma,” said Gussy. “What he wanted was travel and that sort of thing—and he knew you would not like it. We have never travelled much in this family. And then he knew he would not on any great occasion have to work for himself.”

“We never can tell that,” said the old lady. “Land’s gone down, and perhaps the Funds may soon go down. In these dreadful times, you never can know. Ju, take your elbows off the table. You sit like a washer-woman. I never saw such shoulders.”

“The Funds are the country,” said Gussy, “they can’t go down, or England will be ruined. Ju, do you hear what mamma says? Her shoulders are something dreadful. Take your elbows off the table, for goodness’ sake!”

Julia took not the slightest notice of these remarks. She sat with both elbows on the tablecloth, eating bread-and-butter at an elevation of many inches over her neglected plate.

“I have heard,” said Janet, “that the people who are called smart people do that now. It has become the fashion: so Julia is in advance of us instead of being behind, as you think.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Harwood, shaking her head, “bad manners are the fashion, and that is a dreadful thing to say. I remember in my young days—but fortunately we don’t know anything about smart people here.”

Julia’s elbows had disappeared with the rapidity of magic. She would not have it supposed that she meant to be smart or in the fashion whatever anyone might say.

CHAPTER VIII.

Janet found after this experience was over that she had perhaps discounted too quickly the excitement of her position. She had gone too fast, as was the impulse of her nature. Julia Harwood, who had been used to continued “nagging,” which never came to anything, a continual and frivolous demand to which obedience was never exacted, had been taken entirely by surprise by the rapid movements of the little governess. Reason, which had never before been applied to her case, had made a considerable impression upon her; but still more the conviction that Miss Summerhayes would “stand no nonsense,” the wholesome sense of a force which she could not overcome: and between the two the temporary effect produced had been great. And a certain amount of order had followed in the school-room. When the two were alone, Julia replied when she was spoken to, and did more or less what she was told. There was a frame-work created of lessons and rules which helped the hours along, and to which the girl gave a sort of submission. But apart from this, which occupied the mornings of her new existence, poor Janet found herself immersed, submerged, drowned in a sort of tepid bath of Harwoodism which was an experience quite unlooked-for and unthought-of.

Some families, and those perhaps the most amiable in existence, have this tendency so strong that there is no escape from it; they compare everything, judge everything, estimate everything by the rule of their own case—“in our family we do,” or “we don’t do,” so and so, were words continually on Augusta Harwood’s lips. She was a very good, considerate, kind young woman, trying to make everybody comfortable about her, eager to anticipate every want, to see that the stranger was warm enough, cool enough, had just the right amount of sugar in her tea, was not over-tired, did not have damp feet or wear too thin a dress, or get the sun or the firelight in her eyes. Gussy achieved the difficult feat of making a dependent perfectly at her ease, and obliterating almost every trace of that embarrassment which attends the position of a governess. It was not that she fell into one of those sudden enthusiastic friendships which sometimes unites the daughter of the house with the stranger in it, but only that she was constitutionally kind, thoroughly good-hearted and good-natured. It would seem difficult to say any more in her favor than this. And yet, from her gentle, amiable, and good-humored sway there arose one fixed impression: and in her pleasant person there breathed out, embracing all things, one mild, universal atmosphere of the family.

It was as if she knew nothing but Harwoods in the world. Church—even Church!—and State, and laws and governments, and business and books were outside of the oasis in which she dwelt—the universe in general lay beyond, as great London lay beyond the brick walls of the garden in St. John’s Wood. London existed for the advantage of that house, and so did the universe in which London is but a point. But they were outside, and of secondary importance. The Harwoods, their habits, their ways, their ancestors, their relationships, and, above all, their characteristics were within, and everything without took a tinge from this prevailing atmosphere.

It might be some time before the spectators found out what it was. It was like the transparent veil of tarlatan which is sometimes stretched between a drawing-room assembly of spectators and an exhibition of tableaux vivants, to give distance and softness to the mimic scene; it was like the tint sometimes supposed to be becoming to the complexion, which faintly rose-colored glass gives to the air of a boudoir: it was a medium, an atmosphere, all pervading, something from which there was no escape.

Janet had been prepared, as has been seen, for many of the deprivations of a governess, none of which she was called upon to bear. The letters she received from her old friends at Clover, to whom she had narrated her first experiences, were almost enthusiastic in their congratulations.

“You seem to have been fortunate above anything that could be hoped for,” Mrs. Bland wrote. “I never heard of such kind people.”

And so they were, Janet assured herself. Never were people so kind; they cared for her comfort as if she had been a favored visitor; they never allowed her to feel herself de trop. They accepted her into the bosom of the family with the most open as well as the most considerate kindness. Nevertheless, it was not very long before Janet began to feel the creeping in of something not strong enough to be called miasma, a sort of closeness in the air. She felt the heavens contracting round her, and the horizon closing up. These sensations were more or less physically justified by the fact that there is a great deal of vegetation in St. John’s Wood; that the trees grew too close in a hundred gardens, and that though their foliage and greenness were delightful in summer, the fall of the leaf was attended with disagreeables there as in other leafy places; but that was not the heart of the matter.

Janet began to feel herself drawing long breaths of relief when she got outside the garden gate. This was generally in company with Julia, who did not share in the family worship, and whose conversation was very jerky and irregular, leaving the governess free either to lead the dialogue or to refrain from any. And when Janet escaped altogether by herself, as sometimes she did, to go to church, sometimes to the circulating library to get a book, sometimes to the nearest repository of art needlework to match some silk or crewels for Mrs. Harwood, she was still more delighted and relieved.

To escape for an hour from the Harwoods—to become once more conscious of her own individuality, and of the existence of crowds, nay, worlds of people who did not bear that respectable name, became the greatest refreshment to her. She would run out even in the wet if anything was wanted in the most cheerful and, as the family thought, self-denying way.

“But, my dear, it rains. I couldn’t possibly let you go out in the rain, to take all the stiffening out of your crape, and, perhaps, catch cold, all because I want that book,” Mrs. Harwood would say, divided between her desire for a new novel (which is so doubly acceptable on a wet day) and her concern for Janet.

This was a thing that the gardener could not do, nor even her own maid—could that functionary have been persuaded to wet her feet—for maids and gardeners never know what books you have read, even though they themselves have brought them from the library, and produce the same three volumes again and again, as Mrs. Harwood complained, till you are nearly driven out of your senses.

“If you really think you would like a run,” the old lady added, with a sudden sense of the advantage. “I remember when I was your age I never minded the rain—but it will take all the stiffening out of your crape.”

“She has no crape on that dress,” said Gussy, “which I very much approve of, for what is the good of a thing you have always to be thinking of? We never go in for mourning very much in our family. But, mamma, I do think, what with your books and your crewels, and so forth, you impose very much on Miss Summerhayes.”

“Oh, I like it,” cried Janet, “it gives me the greatest pleasure. I only wish I could run on errands all day long, if I could be of any use—you are all so good to me.”

“That is a grateful little thing, Gussy,” said Mrs. Harwood, as Janet, wrapped in a mackintosh, with her skirts drawn up, and a little felt hat upon her head which could not be spoilt, ran lightly along the glistening path to the garden door.

“Yes,” said Gussy, sedately, “she is a kind little thing: and I am sure she would do anything to please you, mamma. And such a good influence over Ju. Dolff will not believe his eyes when he comes home and sees her actually doing her lessons like any other girl.”

“I hope Miss Summerhayes does not humor her too much,” said Mrs. Harwood, with a sigh.

In the meantime, Janet was running along with the rain in her face, and a sense of freedom which made her heart dance. It was not an attractive day to be out, and the long roads in St. John’s Wood, between the garden walls, with here and there a little oasis formed by a few shops, were not, perhaps, exhilarating to pedestrians generally. On a wet day there was nothing at all to be seen or met with in these roads any more than had they been the suburbs of a country town. On fine days the children and their nurserymaids made a great deal of variety, and the old ladies going out for their airings in their bath chairs. It is not, perhaps, a very gay kind of traffic which is represented by bath chairs and perambulators. But there were the tradesmen, too, and occasional cabs passing to add to the effect. But when it rained everything was desolate. The garden doors were closely shut: the houses invisible behind among the bare branches of the trees from which the last shabby leaves were tumbling like rags among the droppings of the rain. What it is to be twenty, and to have a heart free of care! Janet ran along the glistening pavement with her skirts held up, delighted, glad to be out, though she breathed almost as much rain as air, glad to have escaped from the all-enveloping Harwoods, and to be herself for a moment. She was only going on an errand for her employer, and her return was anxiously looked for, so that she knew that she must not be long: but every moment was good. She carried her umbrella shut; she would not lose the feeling of the soft rain on her forehead. A conviction that this was against all the traditions of the Harwoods made it doubly agreeable. They were all afraid of catching cold and getting wet, but not Janet. She liked it. It meant a mark of freedom and independence. It meant being herself without a thought of Harwoodism, as she had been in the old days.

Janet skipped into the stationer’s shop to which she was bound, and which stood only (alas!) about a quarter-of-a-mile off in one of the oases already described. In St. John’s Wood there are a great many stationers’ shops. They are doubled with a circulating library, usually a branch of the all-pervading Mudie, and they sell all manner of “fancy” articles, cardboarding of every description. There is a great sale for menu cards, for little mounts and frames, for calendars and almanacs, and every sort of little composition of paper, pictures, and mottoes in pretty colors, in such districts. Pencils in boxes and out of them, with little holders, with silver cases, and unadorned for drawing purposes: writing materials in pretty colored covers: little books such as innocent minds love, with texts for every day, or pretty verses, or scraps of genteel philosophy. It would fill all my space if I were to give a catalogue of half the things in these stationers’ shops. In addition to all this and the library, with its rows of novels, a little dilapidated, there was a counter for music in this particular example of the stationers of St. John’s Wood, and another one for newspapers both these things forming a portion of the well-established business carried on by the Misses Mimpriss in Laburnum Place.

When Janet skipped in, her face fresh from the rain and cold air, her eyes dancing with freedom and satisfaction, she almost ran against a gentleman who was standing inside turning over the music, and who turned round quickly with a mixture of surprise and curiosity. He was a young man and rather handsome, Janet thought; not very tall but strong and well built, with dark hair and a fine complexion, a little like, perhaps, the male beauties in the hairdressers’ shops. She was so much taken by surprise to find a man in that feminine place that she was, perhaps, a little severe in her hasty judgment. He interfered with her satisfaction somehow, though he was perfectly well-bred, and after the one glance of surprised attention—which was quite justifiable surely when a girl came like a bombshell into a little shop, where no such projectile could have been expected on a wet day—returned to his music and took no further notice. The momentary shock, however, made Janet’s fresh countenance blaze with its surprise and unexpectedness. She went back into the further part of the shop to look over the novels and choose one which Mrs. Harwood would like, which was no easy task. She had to ask for the help of the disengaged sister, who presided over that shrine of fiction, and had a long consultation with her to see which books Mrs. Harwood had already read. Finally, she chose one with much internal doubt, intensified, she could scarcely tell how, by the presence of the man who stood with his back to her, certainly not interfering in any way with that simple operation. And it happened to make matters worse that the sister whom Janet was consulting was not the sister whose business it was to enter the books. Accordingly, when Janet’s Miss Mimpriss said to the other Miss Mimpriss “391,-121 for Mrs. Harwood,” the gentleman who was buying music turned half round again, exactly as if he had said, “Oh!” and gave Janet a look, not like the former look, which was merely conventional, but one which was personal to herself, and meant several things. It was a glance full of understanding, as if he knew all about her, and of criticism, and amusement. His eyebrows went up a little, and he seemed to say, “Oh! so that is who you are? It is you, is it?” which made Janet very angry, though for the life of her she could not have told why. She took her three battered volumes in her hands and left the shop, feeling her little expedition to be quite spoiled. She had meant to make an investigation herself among the music and to look over the “fancy” articles. She was only after all a country young lady; and she believed that among the many pretty things which the Miss Mimprisses sold at a cost of from one to two shillings, she could have found something which Mrs. Bland would have set upon the drawing-room mantelpiece in the vicarage, bidding her visitors look what a pretty thing Janet had sent her from London, and was it not kind of the child?

Janet could not linger, however, to make any such purchase under that man’s eye. She would not have liked to do it before anybody, and had, indeed, jibed at the fancy articles when she had entered the shop with Miss Harwood; but she felt much aggrieved to be so balked.

“Very like a barber’s block,” she said to herself; the sort of man whom you might expect to see in that respectable part of St. John’s Wood, buying music, which perhaps he was going to take with him to some tea-party, to sing to the ladies.

When she had exhaled her annoyance in this angry criticism, Janet recovered some portion of her pleasure, and walked home, but much more slowly, in order that she might have the enjoyment of every moment of her freedom, and not go in too soon. We are all much displeased when maids and page-boys, and other light-hearted but slow-footed messengers, do this, and keep our letters or our novels from us, forgetting that these functionaries too might, like Janet, have need to feel themselves now and then, and be able to think, as they walk along Acacia Road, that they are John or Mary, and not mere officials executing our will.

That night began just as other evenings had begun after dinner. The family group was very comfortable, warm and safe from all contention of the elements which had settled into a downpour outside, from all inharmonious noises or interruptions within. Mrs. Harwood and Gussy at opposite sides of the fire, Miss Summerhayes seated at a little distance with the book upon the table, the very book which she had got from the library, and which she had volunteered to read aloud while the others worked. Very comfortable, but rather dull, but for the book, which was something, and lent an interest to the monotonous night.

When lo! all at once, in the midst of this monotony and unbroken calm, the stillness was suddenly broken by the tingle of the house bell. Somebody at the door! Late in the evening, nearly nine, an hour at which no stranger step or sound ever disturbed the house. Janet stopped reading involuntarily, and grew pale in her surprise, looking round upon her companions with a sort of appeal.