My Young Days | Page 9

on her back, and looked
down at her, the most thorough amusement all over her face.
"Cross enough, do you think? Oh, yes, to be sure I can! Cross enough
to eat you up at one mouthful, and little Sissy after you!"
How funny it sounded! Lottie laughed and so did I, only very nervously.
Then all at once Miss Grant grew very comically grave, and asked us
whether we thought we should soon make her cross? And then
followed such a funny talk, I think I shall never forget it. Miss Grant
was half lying on the sofa now, Lottie and I were bobbing up and down
beside her, sometimes looking right into her blue laughing eyes,
sometimes hiding our own rosy faces, that she mightn't see how queer
she made us feel.
"You don't much like the idea of having a governess, I see," she said;

"you fancy it will be lessons, lessons all day long now, a great deal of
crying, and punishments, very hard things to learn, and no fun any
more. If that's what it really is going to be, I shall get so unhappy that I
shall soon run away home again! And then you think I shall have to
grow cross and ill-tempered, too--that is the worst part of it all."
She pretended to be ready to cry, and Lottie, who didn't quite like to
give up her own opinion, muttered something about "She thought they
always were!"
"Are they?" asked Miss Grant, just as if she really wanted to know, and,
when we laughed and hid our faces, she went on: "I think I know how it
is. This is what you will do to me: You will begin by getting into all the
mischief you can think of, and that will give me a headache; and then
you will be cross and rude, and that will give me great, deep lines in the
forehead; and last of all, you will do vulgar things, that will make my
mouth get into the 'don't' shape, which is so ugly, you know; and, by
and by, when I look at myself in the glass, I shall find myself turned
into a grey-headed old woman, and I shall say, 'Sissy gave me those
wrinkles between my eyes, I always had to frown at her so;' and then,
'Those ugly lines by my mouth came when Lottie vexed me so.' What a
funny thing it will be to have to remember you in that way when you
are grown-up people!"
Of course, we did not like this way of taking it for granted that we were
rude, troublesome children, yet there was a funny look in Miss Grant's
eyes that seemed as if she didn't really mean what she said. And the end
of it all was that we made a compact, as she called it, that we would be
ever so good-tempered, and then she and we would have the happiest
time together that you can fancy.
And I think it all came true. Thanks to our papas and mammas, we
were not quite the rude children we might have been. They had saved
us ever so much trouble, and ever so many tears, by teaching us that
hardest lesson "do as you are told," before we were old enough to
understand its difficulty. And Miss Grant was always so bright and
happy that she scarcely ever let us suspect, even in the naughtiest times,
that we were "making the lines come." Out of doors she was the

merriest among us, and grandmamma would often say to Lottie that she
was ever so much older than Miss Grant, because she would walk
soberly about with a book, while Miss Grant was having all sorts of fun
with the boys. At last she, too, caught the infection, and then we all had
the merriest romps together! How well I remember those early summer
days, and the luxury of flowers everywhere. Is there anything so
happy-looking, so full of overflowing delight, as the long grass, and the
buttercups and daisies, hawthorn and bluebells? We thought ourselves
very wise about flowers then, and had very decided opinions on the
proper blending of colours. Miss Grant was teaching us this, and even
now, when I see any one making a nosegay of wild-flowers, I fancy
myself running up to her with a handful of bright things, to watch in
my eagerness how they were in a minute turned into the beautiful
bouquet that nobody could equal or copy.
She had been with us some time, when one morning we had a visitor
come to spend the day at Beecham. This lady was not old, yet she had
the most wrinkled, aged face I ever saw. When she was gone, Harry,
who