She was one herself.
Millicent Pickering was the children's half-sister, the only child of her father's first marriage. She was a sallow, weedy, and yet attractive-looking girl of nineteen, with some very palpable faults, which, however, were redeemed by the saving merit of a superlatively good temper. She loved a joke, and her idea of one was quite different from that of Miss Winfrey, who, to be sure, was not a little deficient in this very respect. Millicent found her sense of humour best satisfied by the enormities of her little brothers and sisters. She rallied them openly upon the punishments inflicted by their governess; she was in notorious and demoralising sympathy with the young offenders. Out of school she encouraged them in every branch of wickedness; and, for an obvious reason, was ever the first to lead them into temptations which now ended in disgrace. She was, of course, herself the greatest child of them all; and at last Miss Winfrey told her so in as many words. She would have spoken earlier, but that she feared to jeopardise her influence by risking a defeat. But when the great girl took to interrupting the very lesson with her overgrown buffooneries, in the visible vicinity of the open schoolroom door, the time was come to beat or be beaten once and for all.
"Come in, Miss Pickering," said the governess suavely, though her heart was throbbing. "I think I should have the opportunity of laughing too."
The girl strode in, and the laughter rose louder than before. But, however excruciatingly funny her antics might have been outside, they were not continued within.
"Well?" said Miss Winfrey at length.
"Well?" retorted Millicent with mere sauce.
"You great baby!" cried the governess, with a flush and a flash that came like lightning. "You deserve to have your hair taken down, and be put back into short dresses and a pinafore!"
"And sent to you?"
"And sent to me."