Lydia felt so much mortified that she could hardly speak. She, the Head of the School at Miss Glover’s, the owner of the “mathematical mind” so rarely found in one of her own sex, the responsible and trusted accountant at Elena’s, to be told that she could not write English!
At that moment she disliked Margoliouth with all the cordial dislike accorded to a really candid critic.
Yet it was characteristic of Lydia that, even in the midst of her vexation, she realized that to display it would be to destroy much of the Greek’s flattering opinion of her superior intelligence. She drew a long breath, and gazed at him frankly and steadily.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “I must try and study the really good writers, and—and I’ll remember what you say, and try and write better English. I’m sure you’re right.”
It was a little set speech, uttered regardless of the indignation still burning within her, and it did not fail of its effect.
“Well done!” cried the Greek softly. “Well done, Miss Raymond! It is very rare to find so much frankness and determination in a lady, if I may say so—I am the more sure that you will eventually succeed.”
Lydia thanked him and took away her manuscripts.
She was inwardly just as angry at his criticism as she had been on first hearing it, and just as certain that a foreigner could know nothing about the correctness or otherwise of her English. But she congratulated herself on the presence of mind and strength of will which had enabled her to make so good a show of open-minded generosity. Quite evidently Margoliouth thought the better of her for it, and Lydia would not for the world have forfeited his admiration.
It gave her great prestige in the eyes of the other boarders.
Lydia knew that they most of them liked her, Mr. Bulteel because she was young and pretty, his wife, and whining little Mrs. Clarence, because she always listened to them sympathetically, all the while inwardly mindful of Grandpapa’s rule—“Always let the other people talk about themselves.”