The afternoon passed away rapidly in making all sorts of purchases, even of trunks; it seemed to Sylvia that thousands of pounds must have been spent upon her outfit, and she felt a thrill of pride. Everybody behind the various counters treated Miss Ashley with great deference; Sylvia was bound to admit that, however careless she might be of her own appearance, she was splendidly able to help other people to choose jolly things. They drove back to Hornton House in a carriage that seemed full of parcels, though they only took with them what Miss Ashley considered immediately important. Tea was waiting in the garden under a great cedar-tree; and by the time tea was finished Sylvia was sure that she should like Miss Ashley and that she should not run away that night, which she had made up her mind to do unless she was absolutely contented with the prospect of her new existence. She liked her bedroom very much, and the noise that the sparrows made in the creeper outside her window. The starched maid-servant who came to help her dress for dinner rather frightened her, but she decided to be very French in order to take away the least excuse for ridicule.
Sylvia thought at dinner that the prospect of marriage had made Philip seem even older, or perhaps it was his assumption of guardianship which gave him this added seriousness.
“Of course, French she already knows,” he was saying, “though it might be as well to revise her grammar a little. History she has a queer, disjointed knowledge of—it would be as well to fill in the gaps. I should like her to learn a little Latin. Then there are mathematics and what is called science. Of course, one would like her to have a general acquaintance with both, but I don’t want to waste time with too much elementary stuff. It would be almost better for her to be completely ignorant of either.”
“I think you will have to leave the decision to me, Philip,” said Miss Ashley, in that almost too deliberately tranquil voice, which Sylvia felt might so easily become in certain circumstances exasperating. “I think you may rely on my judgment where girls are concerned.”
Philip hastened to assure Miss Ashley that he was not presuming to dictate to her greater experience of education; he only wished to lay stress on the subjects that he considered would be most valuable for the life Sylvia was likely to lead.
“I have a class,” said Miss Ashley, “which is composed of older girls and of which the routine is sufficiently elastic to fit any individual case. I take that class myself.”
Sylvia half expected that Miss Ashley would suggest including Philip in it, if he went on talking any longer. Perhaps Philip himself suspected as much, for he said no more about Sylvia’s education and talked instead about the gravity of the situation in South Africa.
Sylvia was vividly aware of the comfort of her bedroom and of the extraordinary freshness of it in comparison with all the other rooms she had so far inhabited. Miss Ashley faintly reminded her of her mother, not that there was the least outward resemblance except in height, for Miss Ashley’s hair was gray, whereas her mother’s until the day of her death had kept all its lustrous darkness. Yet both wore their hair in similar fashion, combed up high from the forehead so as to give them a majestic appearance. Her mother’s eyes had been of a deep and glowing brown set in that pale face; Miss Ashley’s eyes were small and gray, and her complexion had the hard rosiness of an apple. The likeness between the two women lay rather in the possession of a natural authority which warned one that disobedience would be an undertaking and defiance an impossibility. Sylvia rejoiced in the idea of being under control; it was invigorating, like the delicious torment of a cold bath. Of course she had no intention of being controlled in big things, but she was determined to submit over little things for the sheer pleasure of submitting to Miss Ashley, who was, moreover, likely to be always right. In the morning, when she came down in one of her new frocks, her hair tied back with a big brown bow, and found Miss Ashley sitting in the sunny green window of the dining-room, reading the Morning Post, she congratulated herself upon the positive pleasure that such a getting up was able to give her and upon this new sense of spaciousness that such a beginning of the day was able to provide.
“You’re looking at my dress,” said Miss Ashley, pleasantly. “When you’re my age you’ll abandon fashion and adopt what is comfortable and becoming.”
“I thought it was a dressing-gown yesterday,” Sylvia admitted.