The Late Miss Hollingford | Page 2

on before me to speak
civilly to the gentleman in the parlour, and announce my coming. Miss
Kitty was the drudge of the school, the sweetest-tempered drudge in the
world. She was not so well informed as her elder sisters, and had to
make up in the quantity of her teaching what it lacked in the quality.
She was fagged, and hunted, and worried from morning till night by all
the small girls in the school. She would have been merry if she had had
time, and she was witty whenever she could get the chance of being
anything but a machine; but she was not always happy, for I slept in her
room, and I sometimes heard her crying in the night. As I remember her
first she was young and pretty, but as time went on she grew a little
faded, and a little harassed-looking; though I still thought her sweet
enough for anything.
Well, Miss Kitty went down to the major, and I, following close upon
her heels, heard a little scream as I paused at the parlour door, and there
when I went in was a bronzed-looking gentleman holding Miss Kitty's
two hands in his, and looking in her face. And I could not care about
the birds for thinking of it, and when we went up to bed Miss Kitty told
me that Major Guthrie was an old friend of her family, and that he had
said he would call again. And surely enough he did call again; and then
it happened that the three Miss Sweetmans were invited out to an
evening party--a great event for them. I thought there was something
very particular about it, and so I took care to dress Miss Kitty with my
own hands. She had a plain white dress, and I insisted on lending her
my blue sash and coral necklace; and when she was dressed she put her
finger in her mouth, and asked, between laughing and crying, whether I
could further accommodate her with a coral and bells. She looked as
young as anybody, though she would make fun of herself. And when
she came in that night, and saw my open eyes waiting for her, she sat
down on my bed and began to cry, and told me that Major Guthrie had
asked her to marry him, and she was going to India as his wife. Then I
heard the whole story; how he had loved her dearly long ago; how her

friends had refused him because he was too poor, and she was too
young; how after he had gone off in a passion reverses had come upon
them, and she and her sisters had been obliged to open a school. And so
Miss Kitty went out to India, and the only thing that comforted me for
her loss was the fact that she took with her the embroidered
handkerchief for my mother, and the wrought cigar-case for my father,
which it had taken my idleness a whole year to produce. Ah, me! and
my eyes never beheld either of these three again: friend, father, or
mother.
My first recollections of Mrs. Hollingford are associated with
plum-cake, birth-days, and bon-bons. I remember her as an erect,
dignified-looking lady in a long velvet cloak, and with a peculiarly
venerable face, half severe, half benevolent. I used to feel a little
nervous about speaking to her, but I liked to sit at a distance and look at
her. I had a superstition that she was the most powerful universal agent
in existence; that she had only to say, "Let there be plum-cake," and
immediately it would appear on the table; or, "This little girl requires a
new doll," and at once a waxen cherub would repose in my arms. The
Miss Sweetmans paid her the greatest deference, and the girls used to
peep over the blinds in the school-room at her handsome carriage and
powdered servants. I remember, when a very little girl, presenting
myself before Miss Sweetman one day, and popping up my hand as a
sign that I wanted to ask a question. "What is the reason, Miss
Sweetman," I asked, "that Mrs. Hollingford makes me think of the
valiant woman of whom we were reading in the Bible yesterday?" But
Miss Sweetman was busy, and only puckered up her mouth and ordered
me back to my seat. Mrs. Hollingford used to take me on her knee and
tell me of a little girl of hers who was at school in France, and with
whom I was one day to be acquainted; and a tall lad, who was her son,
used to call sometimes with bouquets for Miss Sweetman or
sugar-plums for me; but I was never in her house, which I believed to
be