"You won't give me up, and forget me? You will write to me and let me write to you?"
"My dear, I don't make friends one day, and give them up the next. Of course, we will write to each other. I am in a way responsible for this London move, but I feel, when we are young, 'oughts' go down under 'wants.' It is of no use eating one's heart out thinking of all the brave things we could do and dare, the best thing is to be given the opportunity of attempting them."
"Yes, I shall be grateful to you all my life for getting me this chance. I hope I shall make good! Though I feel you don't in your heart approve of my going. You think it best for me to buy my experience! I know! But you just wait and see! The hardest thing of all is to go away from you!"
She went back to Ramdale for a week, and then departed to London, and Anstice really missed her, for she had been in and out of the Manor so much.
One day Anstice asked Mrs. Fergusson to stay to lunch when the children's lessons were over.
"This incessant rain is getting upon my nerves," she said to her laughingly. "I did not know I had any till lately. I feel as if I want a good talk with some one to take me out of myself."
So Mrs. Fergusson stayed. Anstice always enjoyed her society. She had read much and been about to many different countries, for she travelled with her Russian pupils a great deal.
Anstice told her about Louise.
"I am so afraid she may fail in London. Can you give any advice about work for a girl of her capabilities?"
"It is difficult. There is such a mad rush of these girls to London now. They are overcrowding each other. If I had a daughter, I would endeavour to keep her away from the offices in town. It is not a healthy life in many ways. I wonder if she would like a secretary's post in a large girls' school at Hampstead? I know the principal of it, and could put in a word for her. She looks a capable girl, but of course there will be about fifty or more trying to get the post, and she wants to have some knowledge of book-keeping."