The Late Miss Hollingford | Page 8

might
be emptied the next; hardening her delicate hands with labour to the
end that justice might be done, that some who had lost might gain, that
a portion of her husband's heavy debts might be paid, and a portion of
the curse of the impoverished lifted from his guilty shoulders.
No luxury was ever permitted in that household. Old gowns were worn
and mended till they could be worn and mended no longer. The girls
were of an age to go abroad to school, but they must be contented with
such education as they could pick up at home, so long as one poor
creature suffered straits through their father's fault. The only indulgence
allowed was almsgiving. Mopsie might divide her dinner with a hungry
child, or Jane bestow her new petticoat on an aged woman; but they
must, in consequence, deny themselves and suffer inconvenience till
such time as it came to be again their turn to have their absolute wants
relieved.
I did, indeed, feel like a drone in a hive when, on leaving my room in
the mornings, I met Mrs. Hollingford coming from her work in the
dairy, John Hollingford arriving from his early visit to a distant part of
the farm, Jane from her sewing closet where she made and mended the
linen of the household, and Mopsie from the kitchen with a piled dish
of breakfast-cakes, showing what her morning task had been. I could
not eat for envy. Why could I not be of use to somebody? I gave
Mopsie some gay ribbons, which were returned to me by her mother.
Nothing might she wear but her plain black frock and white frill. I gave
Jane a book of poems with woodcuts, and that was accepted with
rapture. This encouraged me. I picked up two little children on the road,
and to one I gave a bright silk girdle for a skipping-rope, and to the
other a doll dressed from the materials of a fine gauze hat, which I
picked to pieces for the purpose. I was not going to be a peony

flaunting among thrifty modest vetches. At first I was sorry for the
destruction of my pretty things, but soon I grew to admire the
demureness of my gray gown and little black apron. I learned to make
pies and cakes, to sweep a room and set it to rights, to wash and get up
linen and laces, to churn, to make butter. But as many hands were
engaged in these matters, I was often thrown out of employment. I
made music for my friends in the evenings, and, as they liked it, this
was something; but it was not enough. A new spirit had entered into me.
I felt my old self lost in the admiration which I had conceived for the
new friends who had accepted me amongst them.
By and by I found out a little niche of usefulness for myself. Jane and
Mopsie attended the village school. One day I went to the town to buy
some trifle and call for the girls. It was past the hour for breaking up,
and I found Mopsie romping with some rude-looking girls on the green,
while Jane, detained for some fault, sat alone in the school-room,
perched on a bench, her arms folded and her eyes gloomily fixed on the
wall. When I entered she blushed crimson. She was a proud girl, and I
knew she was hurt at my seeing her disgrace. I coaxed her to speak out
her trouble.
"I could teach the whole school," she said, fiercely--"master, mistress,
and all--and yet I am kept sitting over a, b, c, like a baby. I get so sick
of it that sometimes I answer wrong by way of novelty. Then I have to
hold out my hand for the rod. To-day I drew Portia and Shylock on my
slate, and forgot to finish my sum; therefore I am disgraced!"
I seized the happy moment and offered myself to the girls as a
governess. Mopsie stopped on the road and hugged me in delight. Jane
squeezed my hand and was silent during the rest of the walk, except
when she said,
"Mother will never consent. I am too proud, and she wants me to be
humbled. She thinks it is good for me to go to the village school."
That night, however, I laid my plan before Mrs. Hollingford, and, after
some trouble, I attained my point.

We chose for our school-room an unoccupied chamber at the end of a
long passage upstairs. It was furnished with a deal table and chairs, and
a small square of green carpet laid upon the sanded floor. It had three
latticed windows looking westward, and one of those odd grates I have
mentioned,