“Mrs Crichton never objects to anything,” said Flossy; “and as for Mr Crichton, surely he won’t be so horrid.”
“Well, I could not help it,” said Miss Venning.
“No,” returned Flossy; “and as Mysie is not exactly a girl it doesn’t signify.”
Mysie was eighteen and a week; but Flossy used the term “girl” in a strictly technical sense.
“Dear me!” she continued, “my class will be waiting for me.” And as she ran into the house Miss Venning looked after her.
“I think young men have very strange tastes,” she said.
“Because Flossy has no lovers?” said Clarissa, with a slight emphasis.
“Well, I am sure I do not want her to have any,” returned Miss Venning, with a smile at her sisterly partiality.
“Dear me, no, Mary! Flossy won’t be fit for a lover for five years at least. She has all the world to reform first!”
Miss Venning laughed as she went to tend her beautiful roses, and Clarissa, left alone, wandered on till she sat down under an acacia tree. She threw herself back on the soft turf, and gazed up at the sky through its veil of delicate dancing foliage, while she caught the fast-falling white blossoms in her hand. It was a childish attitude and a childish action; but it may have been absently done, for she was still smiling at the joke of the surprised lovers. At last the smile trembled and ceased, and she hid her face on the mossy turf. Lying there on the grass, with her little slim figure and curly head, she looked like a girl escaped from school, fretting over her tasks or dreaming of fairy princes. But Miss Clarissa was twenty-eight, and a schoolmistress; and had tasks to set instead of to learn, and no lovers to dream of, past, present, or future. So she soon sat upright, brushed off the acacia blossoms, and went into the house to get ready for tea.