"Rot! You can work, as you call it, here. I'll put that straight, and it wouldn't hurt to let your paints hang over for a bit. There's plenty else to occupy you!"
"Between you and grandfather," said Jean, with some spirit, "I feel I have no mind or individuality of my own at all!"
Charlie gave one of his hearty laughs.
"You're one of the best young women going!" he asserted. "But you're mistaking your vocation. You are born to rule a house, and make us poor men comfortable. You've a knack at it that dozens of married women would give their eyes to have! And the governor and I know when we're well off."
Jean felt powerless to plead her own cause with Charlie, and so before she half realised it, he had taken his departure, and she had pledged herself to stay with her grandfather till he came back.
[CHAPTER XXI]
THE STRUGGLING PROFESSIONAL
"Serene, and unafraid of solitude,
I worked the short days out."—Aurora Leigh.
JEAN had need of much patience during the weeks that followed. Her grandfather was irritable and difficult to please, yet he became so accustomed to her services, that he would never let her leave his room for very long at a time.
It was the old life again, the dreary flat marshland without, and the narrow confined life within, yet Jean wondered sometimes what had changed it all so to her. She was not unhappy; she did not feel the fret and chafe of it as she used to do, and she found herself taking an increasing interest in her poorer neighbours close to the door. She read and talked to her grandfather, and tried to consider all his whims; she gardened with Rawlings, and she found a little time for quiet reading herself.