“Why not?” he answered kindly. “Is it anything very serious? Out with it!”
“I was thinking, Mr. Macheson,” she said, “that I should like to leave home—if I could—if there was anything which I could do. I wanted to ask your advice.”
He laid down his pipe and looked at her seriously.
“Why, Letty,” he said, “how long have you been thinking of this?”
“Oh! ever so long, sir,” she exclaimed, speaking with more confidence. “You see there’s nothing for me to do here except when there’s any one staying, like you, sir, and that’s not often. Mother won’t let me help with the rough work, and Ruth’s growing up now, she’s ever such a strong girl. And I should like to go away if I could, and learn to be a little more—more ladylike,” she added, with reddening cheeks.
Macheson was puzzled. The girl was not looking him in the face. He felt there was something at the back of it all.
“My dear girl,” he said, “you can’t learn to be ladylike. That’s one of the things that’s born with you or it isn’t. You can be just as much a lady helping your mother here as practising grimaces in a London drawing-room.”
“But I want to improve myself,” she persisted.
“Go for a long walk every day, and look about you,” he said. “Read. I’ll lend you some books—the right sort. You’ll do better here than away.”
She was frankly dissatisfied.