Goody interrupted the conversation at this point, and Harebell's frock was discussed.
When Miss Triggs went away, Harebell said:
"It's a funny thing, Goody, but there's something in the eyes of people that tells you when they're good. Do you think God is inside them, and looks out now and then?"
Goody was, as usual, shocked by Harebell's speeches. The little girl was so much in earnest that she could not see why she was wrong in speaking so, and then Goody went on to talk about Miss Triggs.
"She is a good little woman if ever there was one. She keeps an old mother and a worthless scamp of a drunken brother on what she earns, and the house is like a new pin, never a speck of dust to be seen. She do suffer cruelly, sometimes from her back—and that was done as a child by her drunken father. She's always suffered for the sins of others, I say, and always smiling and happy. If everybody lived as she lives, the world would be a different place."
"I should like to go and see her," said Harebell thoughtfully; "and I'd like to see her brother too. I'm so interested in wicked people. All drunkards are wicked, aren't they?"
But Goody went away. She told Andy downstairs that Harebell gave her such continual shocks when she talked to her, that she was quite "dumbfounded to hear her."
The day after this, Mrs. Keith said to Harebell at breakfast:
"I have made arrangements for you to do lessons with the Rectory children. You are to be at the Rectory every morning at nine o'clock, and leave again at half-past twelve. I hope you will be very good and give no trouble to their governess. It is very kind of her to be willing to take another pupil. Mrs. Garland will be here this afternoon; she wants to see you."
"Is Mrs. Garland the governess?"