Miss Merivales Mistake | Page 8

going to discuss Herbert Spencer's Theory of Education."
"Dear me! these sound very difficult subjects for you, my dear," said Miss Merivale, trying to repress a laugh as she looked at Clare's serious young face. "They must need a great deal of preparation."
"Yes, that is the worst of it. I haven't time for any study. We workers lead very busy lives, Miss Merivale. I am rushing all day from one thing to another, feeling all the time that I ought to be doing something else."
It suggested itself to Miss Merivale that work undertaken in that hurried fashion must do more harm than good; but she was too eager to speak of Rhoda Sampson to think much of anything else. "You have someone to help you, Miss Smythe told us yesterday," she said. "Someone who typewrites your letters."
"Oh, Miss Sampson? Yes, she is an energetic little thing. But she has vexed me to-day. I particularly wanted her this afternoon, and she has asked for a holiday. Her little cousin is ill, and she wants to take him into the country somewhere. She has just gone. You must have met her on the stairs."
Miss Merivale started. "Yes, I met someone coming down. Was that Miss Sampson? Then she is not coming back to-day? I wanted some programmes typewritten. Could you give me her address?"
"Yes, I have it here somewhere. But she will be here on Monday. I will speak to her, if you like I shall be glad to get her some work; for after next week I shall not want her, though I have not told her so yet. Mother is coming home rather sooner than we expected, and I am going back to Desborough with her."
"Indeed? You will be sorry to give up your work, won't you, my dear?" asked Miss Merivale mechanically, as she watched Clare turning over her address-book.
"Mother has promised that I shall come back later on and stay with Aunt Metcalfe. I shall like that better than this. One gets tired of a flat after a time. But here is Miss Sampson's address. Will you write to her, or shall I tell her what you want?"
"I will go there now," Miss Merivale said, her hand closing eagerly on the slip of paper Clare gave her. "She has just come from Australia, Miss Smythe said."
"Yes; they have been in England a few months only. I know nothing more of her. But she is a good little thing. Pauline does not like her, but Pauline is too critical sometimes. I notice that she is strangely lacking in sympathy towards girls of Miss Sampson's class."
It was a long drive from Chelsea to Acacia Road, Kentish Town. Miss Merivale knew London very little, though she had lived near it all her life, and the dreary, respectable streets she drove through after leaving Oxford Street behind her oppressed her even more than Whitechapel had done in her one visit to it with Tom, the year before, to see a loan collection of pictures. Street after street of blank, drab-faced houses--dull, unsmiling houses! She thought of children growing up there, wan and joyless, like plants kept out of the sun. And then two happy-eyed boys came running by with their satchels under their arms, while a door opened and a woman with a smiling mother-face came out to welcome them. And Miss Merivale confessed to herself the mistake she had been making. Where love is, even a dull London street has its sunshine.
Acacia Road was reached at last, and the cab drew up before a small bow-windowed house that had a card, "Apartments to Let," over the hall door. A little servant with a dirty apron and a merry face opened the door, and two boys with bright red pinafores came rushing from the sitting-room behind her.
Miss Sampson wasn't in, but her aunt, Mrs. M'Alister, was, the smiling servant-maid told Miss Merivale, and led the way into the front sitting-room. The boys ran upstairs. Miss Merivale heard them shouting to their mother that a lady wanted her, and she sat down on a chair near the door, trembling all over.
The room was the ordinary lodging-house sitting-room; but though there was a litter of toys on the worn carpet, it had evidently been carefully swept and dusted that morning, and there was a brown jug filled with fresh daffodils on the centre table. On the side table near Miss Merivale there was a pile of books. She looked at the titles as she waited for a step on the stairs--The Civil Service Geography, Hamblin Smith's Arithmetic, one or two French Readers, a novel by George MacDonald, and a worn edition of Longfellow's Poems. Miss Merivale wondered if they all belonged to Rhoda.
She was not kept waiting very long. Almost before she had finished looking