“It is only silly girls who wish to talk,” said Violante, quoting a sentiment of Rosa’s, and looking slightly hurt.
“Then do you be wise,” said Miss Venning, rather amused. “Now go to your lessons.”
Violante dropped into the routine of her new life with surprising quickness. She did not dislike it; but, as she wrote to Rosa: “There is so much that I do not understand.” She found herself, of course, very ignorant; but either her teachers found teaching her a pleasant task, or she had exaggerated her own dulness, for no one gave her up as hopeless. She even managed to exercise a sort of control on the few occasions when she was forced to assume authority. The little girls delighted in her, and her greatest pleasure was to do their hair for them, make them pretty things, teach them fancy-work, and be generally a slave to them. She was willing to assume any amount of the playtime responsibility generally considered so irksome, and, as Clarissa observed, would have been “all nursery, and no governess,” instead of sharing the prevailing tendency in the opposite direction. The elder ones were very fond of her, but, though she responded quickly to kindness, she did not bestow any depth of affection on anyone but Miss Florence, whom she regarded as a superior being. Flossy was a perpetual wonder to her. Rosa had been a fairly efficient and conscientious teacher; but, assuredly, she had not found it her greatest delight, nor rattled away even to such an uncomprehending listener as Violante of classes and examinations and the principles of education. She had not taken so vivid an interest in each one of her pupils, nor been so anxious to extend her sphere of labour, that she could scarcely, as Flossy’s sisters said, see a girl passing in the street without wanting to teach her, and had always a plea for extending some of the advantages of Oxley Manor “just this once” to some poor little outsider who stood just “next” in the social scale to those who already enjoyed them. And she could do so many things herself. The girls said Miss Florence was writing a book, and she certainly drew nearly as well as the master. She could make her dresses, too, not quite so well as the dressmaker, and was much prouder of them than of the drawing or the book either. Enthusiasm is infectious. Violante caught the prevailing tone and worshipped Miss Florence with innocent ardour. It was a somewhat dangerous atmosphere for Flossy, but she was more wrapped up in her occupations than in herself; she heartily loved her admiring pupils, and had her own enthusiasms in other directions.
There were two schoolrooms at Oxley Manor; and in the larger one, in the dusky firelight of a Saturday afternoon, the two young “pupil teachers,” for which simple name Flossy was wont to contend, sat learning some French poetry. Violante did not like learning her lessons, it reminded her too much of learning her parts; but, then, as she reflected, it did not matter nearly so much if she could not say them. She sat on a stool in a corner by the mantelpiece, her face framed in its softly-curling locks, in shadow, and the firelight dancing on her book and on her childish, delicate hands—hands that looked fit only to cling and caress, belying their fair share of deftness and skill. Miss Robertson sat on a chair, and held her book before her eyes, for she was short-sighted. She had chilblains, and occasionally rubbed her fingers. Her companion’s idleness was quite an interruption to her; she felt obliged to keep her in order.
“You don’t seem to get on with your poetry, signorina,” she said, giving the title which attached to Violante as a sort of Christian name.
“No, it is hard.”
“One must give one’s mind to it. I don’t think you take a sufficiently serious view of life, signorina.”
“A serious view?” repeated Violante.
“Well, of work, you know. Look at Miss Florence. What do you suppose makes her so energetic and useful?”
“I suppose,” said Violante, “that she is like my father, and has enthusiasm. And, perhaps, she has not much else to think of. She is very happy.”