Mrs. Stirring was the lodging-house keeper: a highly respectable little woman, "genteel" to a degree in her own estimation, but apt to be plaintive in tone and behindhand in work. So she was not always an available "companion," and when available she was not too cheerful.
The morning "constitutional" became a daily event, regular as breakfast itself when weather permitted. Happily, Dorothea was a very good walker. The Colonel went fast and far; and he never thought of asking whether pace or distance suited his daughter's capabilities. Dorothea enjoyed the rapid motion and the comparative freshness of the morning air. She would have enjoyed some conversation likewise; but the Colonel was seldom in a talkative mood. If she spoke, he grunted; if she asked a question, he answered it, and that was all.
How to fill the remaining hours of the day became, even in one week, something of a problem to Dorothea. She had work in hand, but it is dull, at the age of eighteen, to sit and work with no one to take any interest in the progress of the needle. She dearly loved reading, but the Colonel's books were such as to put that love to a pretty severe test. She could have spent hours happily any day in writing to Mrs. Kirkpatrick and her favourite schoolfellows; but her father's pet economy was in the matter of paper and stamps. So time threatened to hang upon Dorothea's hands.
Nine years had elapsed since the death of Dorothea's mother; and the greater part of those nine years had been spent by her in a small Yorkshire school, kept by Mrs. Kirkpatrick. That had grown to be Dorothea's real "home." She hardly realised the fact while there, loyally reserving the term for future life with her father, and sometimes counting it a little hard to spend so many of her holidays at school. But now that the long-expected life with her father had begun, she knew well enough which was the real home.
Through the nine years Colonel Tracy had lived more or less in London, often going abroad for a while. It had happened curiously often—almost regularly—that he had to go abroad just before Dorothea's holidays, so that he was "quite unable to receive her." Whether the more correct word would not have been "unwilling" may be doubted. He was a man who disliked trouble; and he had no notion of doing on principle that which he disliked, for the sake of others.
About once a year, he had commonly arranged to spend a fortnight at some northern watering-place with Dorothea: this being the least troublesome mode he could devise for amusing a school-girl. From the age of twelve to the age of eighteen, she had never been to London. "Too expensive a journey," the Colonel said, though he made nothing of going himself north or south, travelling first-class. He liked to have Dorothea always within easy reach of Mrs. Kirkpatrick, that he might get her off his hands without difficulty when he found the girlish spirits too much.
Dorothea's recollections of his manner of life in town, seen before her thirteenth birthday, had grown somewhat dim, and perhaps were embellished by distance. Moreover, he had often changed his headquarters since those days, so her recollections were the less important. Certainly she did not expect what she found. The first glimpse of the dingy apartments, which for more than a year, he had made his home, gave a shock. Had the Colonel been aware of her sensations, he would have counted them unreasonable. He had "done his duty by her" in the matter of education. He expected now that she should "do her duty by him" in the matter of submission and usefulness.
Dorothea was a girl of too much character not to be useful, of too much principle to indulge in discontent. Still, this week had been a week of "deadly dulness"; and what there was for her to do, she had, as yet, failed to discover.
The Colonel arranged everything, ordered dinner, interviewed the landlady, and undertook to procure fish and vegetables. He piqued himself upon his intimate acquaintance with household details. He needed neither advice nor help. Dorothea was a mere adjunct in his existence thus far, less important than the said fish, less necessary than the said vegetables. She felt like a stranded boat, cast upon a mudbank, out of reach of the tide of life which surged and roared around. This, in a London street, where cabs and hansoms dashed past, where the sound of the great human Babel never ceased.
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