“We could not get on without her even if I were well,” continued Margaret; “and dear mamma had such perfect trust in her, and we all know and love her so well—it would make us put up with a great deal.”
“It is all my own fault,” said Ethel, only anxious to make amends to Miss Winter. “I wish you would not say anything about it.”
“Yes, it does seem wrong even to think of it,” said Margaret, “when she has been so very kind. It is a blessing to have any one to whom Mary and Blanche may so entirely be trusted. But for you—”
“It is my own fault,” repeated Ethel.
“I don’t think it is quite all your own fault,” said Margaret, “and that is the difficulty. I know dear mamma thought Miss Winter an excellent governess for the little ones, but hardly up to you, and she saw that you worried and fidgeted each other, so, you know, she used to keep the teaching of you a good deal in her own hands.”
“I did not know that was the reason,” said Ethel, overpowered by the recollection of the happy morning’s work she had often done in that very room, when her mother had not been equal to the bustle of the whole school-room. That watchful, protecting, guarding, mother’s love, a shadow of Providence, had been round them so constantly on every side, that they had been hardly conscious of it till it was lost to them.
“Was it not like her?” said Margaret, “but now, my poor Ethel, I don’t think it would be right by you or by Miss Winter, to take you out of the school-room. I think it would grieve her.”
“I would not do that for the world.”
“Especially after her kind nursing of me, and even, with more reason, it would not be becoming in us to make changes. Besides, King Etheldred,” said Margaret, smiling, “we all know you are a little bit of a sloven, and, as nurse says, some one must be always after you, and do you know? even if I were well, I had rather it was Miss Winter than me.”
“Oh, no, you would not be formal and precise—you would not make me cross.”