"We begin lessons to-morrow," says the new governess, gravely, who looks always so utterly and absurdly unlike a governess, or anything but a baby or a water-pixie, with her yellow hair and her gentian eyes. "It will be impossible for me to go."
"But lessons will be over at two o'clock," says Cissy, who likes going to Gowran, and regards Clarissa as "a thing of beauty." "Why not walk up afterwards?"
"I shall expect you," says Clarissa, with decision; and then the two girls tell her they will go with her as far as the vicarage gate, as she must now go home.
There she bids them good-by, and, passing through the gate, goes up the road. Compelled to look back once again, by some power we all know at times, she sees Georgie's small pale face pressed against the iron bars, gazing after her, with eyes full of lonely longing.
"Good-by, Clarissa," she says, a little sad imploring cadence desolating her voice.
"Until to-morrow" replies Clarissa, with an attempt at gayety, though in reality the child's mournful face is oppressing her. Then she touches the ponies lightly, and disappears up the road and round the corner, with Bill, as preternaturally grave as usual, sitting bolt upright beside her.
The next morning is soft and warm, and, indeed, almost sultry for the time of year. Thin misty clouds, white and shadowy, enwrap the fields and barren ghost-like trees and sweep across the distant hills. There is a sound as of coming rain,—a rushing and a rustling in the naked woods. "A still wild music is abroad," as though a storm is impending, that shall rise at night and shake the land the more fiercely because of its enforced silence all this day.
"But now, at noon,
Upon the southern side of the slant hill,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast
The season smiles, resigning all its rage,
And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue,
Without a cloud: and white without a speck,
The dazzling splendor of the scene below."
The frost has gone, for the time being; no snow fell last night; scarcely does the wind blow. If, indeed, "there is in souls a sympathy with sounds," I fear Georgie and Cissy and the children must be counted utterly soulless, as they fail to hear the sobbing of the coming storm, but with gay voices and gayer laughter come merrily over the road to Gowran. Upon the warm sullen air the children's tones ring like sweet silver bells.
As they enter the gates of Gowran, the youngest child, Amy, runs to the side of the new governess, and slips her hand through her arm.