Nathalie adored Lydia, but she was incurably honest.
She went home for good the year before Lydia was to enter upon her last term at Miss Glover’s.
“You’ll come and stay with us next year, won’t you?” entreated Nathalie. “There’s no one but father and me at home, but quite a lot of nice people live near.”
“Of course I’ll come. I’d love to come. I should just have left here,” said Lydia.
She wondered whether Nathalie realized that on leaving school she would be seeking for employment. Most of Miss Glover’s pupils had their homes in the locality, and went as a matter of course “to help father in the shop.” Several found situations as teachers, one had gone to Bristol University to study for a medical degree, and only a minority, like Nathalie herself, looked forward to living at home.
Lydia knew that she meant to write, and she had long ago told Nathalie the secret of her ambitions, but she had said nothing about other work, and the two girls parted without having broached the subject.
“It will be time enough to tell Nathalie when I know what I’m going to do,” reflected Lydia, with characteristic caution.
She was sure that Aunt Beryl expected her to teach. Miss Glover herself had hinted that a post as Junior Mistress might be available in a year’s time to one of Lydia’s abilities. That would mean sleeping at home, having long holidays in the summer, and lesser ones at Christmas and Easter, and a salary as well as her midday dinner at school.
It might also mean a Senior Mistress-ship after a certain number of years, an increase of salary, and the far-away, ultimate possibility of partnership with the Head. And it would also mean an endless succession of pupils, almost all local, a life spent among femininity until her interests would all centre round numbers of her own sex, and a narrowing of vision such as must be inevitable in a mind exclusively engaged in intercourse with the half-developed faculties of youth.
Lydia wished to leave the little seaside town.