“You have been there seven years.”
“Yes, and very happy. When Fanny married, Lady Milsom was left alone, and would not part with me, and then came the two little boys from India, so that she had an excuse for retaining me; but that is over now, or will be in a few weeks time. I had been trying for an engagement, and finding that beside your high-school diploma young ladies I am considered quite passée—”
“My dear! With your art, and music, and all!”
“Too true! And while I was digesting a polite hint that my terms were too high, and therewith Agatha’s earnest appeal to be sent to Girton, there comes this inheritance! Taking my burthen off my back, and making me ready to throw up my heels like a young colt.”
“Ah! you will be taking another burthen, perhaps.”
“No doubt, I suppose so, but let me find it out by degrees. I can only think as yet of having my dear girls to myself, moi, as the French would say, after having seen so little of them.”
“It has been very unfortunate. Epidemics have been strangely inconvenient.”
“Yes. First there was whooping cough here to destroy the summer holidays; then came the Milsoms’ measles, and I could not go and carry infection. Oh! and then Freddy broke his leg, and his grandmother was too nervous to be left with him. And by and by some one told her the scarlatina was in the town.”
“It really was, you know.”
“Any way, it would have been sheer selfish inhumanity to leave her, and then she had a real illness, which frightened us all very much. Next came influenza to every one. And these last holidays! What should the newly-come little one from India do, but catch a fever in the Red Sea, and I had to keep guard over the brothers at Weymouth till she was reported safe, and I don’t believe it was infectious after all! Still, I am tired of ‘other people’s stairs.’”