Uncle Max | Page 9

room 'because Jill would have nothing to distract her from
her studies.' The poor child would put up her shoulders at this remark
and draw down the corners of her lips in a way that would make Aunt
Philippa scold her for her awkwardness. 'You need not make yourself
plainer than you are, Jocelyn,' she would say severely; for Jill's
awkward manners troubled her motherly vanity. 'What is the good of
all the dancing and drilling and riding with Captain Cooper if you will
persist in hunching your shoulders as though you were deformed?
Fräulein has been complaining of you this morning; she seems
excessively displeased at your carelessness and want of application.' 'I
know I shall get stupid, shut up in that dull hole with Fräulein,' Jill
would say passionately, after one of these maternal lectures. Aunt
Philippa was really very fond of Jill; but she misunderstood the girl's
nature. The system had answered so well with Sara that she could not
be brought to comprehend why it should fail with her other child. Sara
had grown up blooming and radiant in spite of the depressing

influences of Fräulein and the dull, narrow schoolroom. Her music and
singing masters had come to her there. Little Madame Blanchard had
chirped to her in Parisian accent for the hour together over les modes
and le beau Paris. Sara had danced and drilled with the other young
ladies at Miss Dugald's select establishment, and had joined them at the
riding-school or in the cavalcade under Captain Cooper.
Sara had worn her bondage lightly, and had fascinated even grim old
Herr Schliefer. Her tact and easy adaptability had kept Fräulein
Sonnenschein in a state of tepid good-humour. Every one, even cross
old Draper, idolised Sara for her beauty and sprightly ways. When Aunt
Philippa declared her education finished, she tripped out of the
schoolroom as happily as possible to take possession of her grand new
bedroom and the little boudoir, where all her girlish treasures were
arranged. She had not been the least impatient for her day of freedom:
it would all come in good time. When the sceptre was put into her
hands and her sovereignty acknowledged by the whole household, the
young princess was not a bit excited. She put on her court dress and
made her courtesy to her majesty with the same charming
unconsciousness and ease of manner. No wonder people were charmed
with such good-humour and freshness. If the glossy hair did not cover a
large amount of brains, no one found fault with her for that.
Jill raged and stormed fiercely under Sara's light-hearted philosophy;
when her sister told her to be patient under Fräulein's yoke, that a good
time was coming for her also, when lesson-books would be shut up,
and Herr Schliefer would cease to scatter snuff on the carpet as he sat
drumming with his fingers on the keyboard and grunting out brief
interjections of impatience.
'What does it matter about Herr Schliefer?' Jill would say, in a sort of
fury. 'I like him a hundred times better than I do that mincing little
poll-parrot of a Madame Blanchard: she is odious, and I hate her, and I
hate Fräulein too. It is not the lessons I mind; one has to learn lessons
all one's life; it is being shut up like a bird in a cage when one's wings
are ready for flight. I should like to fly away from this room, from
Fräulein, from the whole of the horrid set; it makes me cross, wicked,

to live like this, and all your sugar-plums will do me no good. Go away,
Sara; you do not understand as Ursula does, it makes me feel bad to see
you standing there, looking so pretty and happy, and just laughing at
me.'
'Of course I laugh at you, Jocelyn, when you behave like a baby,'
returned Sara, trying to be severe, only her dimples betrayed her. 'Well,
as you are so cross, I shall go away. There is the chocolate I promised
you. Ta-ta.' And Sara put down the _bonbonnière_ on the table and
walked out of the room.
I was not surprised to see Jill push it away. No one understood the poor
child but myself; she was precocious, womanly, for her age; she had
twenty times the amount of brains that Sara possessed, and she was
starving on the education provided for her.
To dance and drill and write dreary German exercises, when one is
thirsting to drink deeply at the well of knowledge; to go round and
round the narrow monotonous course that had sufficed for Sara's
moderate abilities, like the blind horse at the mill, and never to advance
an inch out of the beaten track, this was simply maddening to Jill's
sturdy intellect.