‘Here are my children, Emma. You will take care of them, please. You are keeping order here, I suppose?’
There was a smile and bow in answer as the door closed, and the omnibus jerked away its ponderous length.
‘I’m sorry to see that Stebbing there,’ observed the aunt, as she went back; ‘but Emma Norton ought to be able to keep him in order. It is well you have no lessons out of the house to-day, Gillian.’
‘Are you going out then?’
‘Oh yes!’ said Miss Mohun, running upstairs, and presently coming back with a school-bag and a crackling waterproof cloak, but pausing as she saw Gillian at the window, nursing the Sofy, and gazing at the gray cloud over the gray sea. ‘You are not at a loss for something to do,’ she said, ‘you said you meant to write to your mother.’
‘Oh yes!’ said Gillian, suddenly fretted, and with a sense of being hunted, ‘I have plenty to do.’
‘I see,’ said Miss Mohun, turning over the books that lay on the little table that had been appropriated to her niece, in a way that, unreasonably or not, unspeakably worried the girl, ‘Brachet’s French Grammar—that’s right. Colenso’s Algebra—I don’t think they use that at the High School. Julius Caesar—you should read that up in Merivale.’
‘I did,’ said Gillian, in a voice that very nearly said, ‘Do let them alone.’
‘Well, you have materials for a very useful, sensible morning’s work, and when Ada comes down, very likely she will like to be read to.’
Off went the aunt, leaving the niece stirred into an absolute desire, instead of spending the sensible morning, to take up ‘Near Neighbours’, and throw herself into an easy-chair; and when she had conscientiously resisted that temptation, her pen would hover over ‘Hilda’s Experiences’, even when she had actually written ‘Dearest Mamma.’ She found she was in no frame to write such a letter as would be a comfort to her mother, so she gave that up, and made her sole assertion of liberty the working out of a tough double equation in Colenso, which actually came right, and put her in such good humour that she was no longer afraid of drumming the poor piano to death and Aunt Ada upstairs to distraction, but ventured on learning one of the Lieder ohne Worte; and when her Aunt Ada came down and complimented her on the sounds that had ascended, she was complacent enough to write a very cheerful letter, whilst her aunt was busied with her own. She described the Sunday-school question that had arisen, and felt sure that her father would pronounce his Gill to be a sensible young woman. Afterwards Miss Adeline betook herself to a beautiful lily of church embroidery, observing, as Gillian sat down to read to her Alphonse Karr’s Voyage autour de mon Jardin, that it was a real pleasure to listen to such prettily-pronounced French. Kunz lay at her feet, the Sofy nestled in Gillian’s lap, and there was a general sense of being rubbed down the right way.