With these hopes, Kate was only moderately sorry to leave the sea and pine-trees behind her, and find herself once more steaming back to London, carrying in her hand a fine blue and white travelling-bag, worked for her by her two little friends, but at which Lady Barbara had coughed rather dryly. In the bag were a great many small white shells done up in twists of paper, that pretty story “The Blue Ribbons,” and a small blank book, in which, whenever the train stopped, Kate wrote with all her might. For Kate had a desire to convince Sylvia Joanna that one was much happier without being a countess, and she thought this could be done very touchingly and poetically by a fable in verse; so she thought she had a very good idea by changing the old daisy that pined for transplantation and found it very unpleasant, into a harebell.
A harebell blue on a tuft of moss
In the wind her bells did toss.
That was her beginning; and the poor harebell was to get into a hot-house, where they wanted to turn her into a tall stately campanula, and she went through a great deal from the gardeners. There was to be a pretty fairy picture to every verse; and it would make a charming birthday present, much nicer than anything that could be bought; and Kate kept on smiling to herself as the drawings came before her mind’s eye, and the rhymes to her mind’s ear.
So they came home; but it was odd, the old temper of the former months seemed to lay hold of Kate as soon as she set foot in the house in Bruton Street, as if the cross feelings were lurking in the old corners.
She began by missing Mrs. Lacy very much. The kind soft governess had made herself more loved than the wayward child knew; and when Kate had run into the schoolroom and found nobody sitting by the fire, no sad sweet smile to greet her, no one to hear her adventures, and remembered that she had worried the poor widow, and that she would never come back again, she could have cried, and really had a great mind to write to her, ask her pardon, and say she was sorry. It would perhaps have been the beginning of better things if she had; but of all things in the world, what prevented her? Just this—that she had an idea that her aunt expected it of her! O Kate! Kate!
So she went back to the harebell, and presently began rummaging among her books for a picture of one to copy; and just then Lady Barbara came in, found half a dozen strewn on the floor, and ordered her to put them tidy, and then be dressed. That put her out, and after her old bouncing fashion she flew upstairs, caught her frock in the old hitch at the turn, and half tore off a flounce.
No wonder Lady Barbara was displeased; and that was the beginning of things going wrong—nay, worse than before the going to Bournemouth. Lady Barbara was seeking for a governess, but such a lady as she wished for was not to be found in a day; and in the meantime she was resolved to do her duty by her niece, and watched over her behaviour, and gave her all the lessons that she did not have from masters.
Whether it was that Lady Barbara did not know exactly what was to be expected of a little girl, or whether Kate was more fond of praise than was good for her, those daily lessons were more trying than ever they had been. Generally she had liked them; but with Aunt Barbara, the being told to sit upright, hold her book straight, or pronounce her words rightly, always teased her, and put her out of humour at the beginning. Or she was reminded of some failure of yesterday, and it always seemed to her unjust that bygones should not be bygones; or even when she knew she had been doing her best, her aunt always thought she could have done better, so that she had no heart or spirit to try another time, but went on in a dull, save-trouble way, hardly caring to exert herself to avoid a scolding, it was so certain to come.
It was not right—a really diligent girl would have won for herself the peaceful sense of having done her best, and her aunt would have owned it in time; whereas poor Kate’s resistance only made herself and her aunt worse to each other every day, and destroyed her sense of duty and obedience more and more.
Lady Barbara could not be always with her, and when once out of sight there was a change. If she were doing a lesson with one of her masters, she fell into a careless attitude in an instant, and would often chatter so that there was no calling her to order, except by showing great determination to tell her aunt. It made her feel both sly and guilty to behave so differently out of sight, and yet now that she had once begun she seemed unable to help going on and she was sure, foolish child, that Aunt Barbara’s strictness made her naughty!