Next Jack got married and the house became very dull. A few weeks later Deborah went to college.
CHAPTER XIV
College was very distasteful. Her one aim and object in life was to live quietly and to be peaceably let alone; but there was never any quietness here, and much less peace. Privacy was almost a thing unknown.
For all that, the discipline and the life were in many ways excellent, and the governesses worked so hard that they had a knack of making lazy students ashamed of themselves.
There were never any slovenly-prepared lessons, and everything was done with clock-like precision. The great fault was that the hours of drudgery were too long, and the occasional sound of chimes would greatly have improved the everlasting tic-tic.
The most comical part of the whole thing, perhaps, was the French lesson. Deborah used to sit and shake with laughing the whole time it was in progress, it was so very funny.
But she had one thing to be thankful for whilst there. Her eyes were very troublesome for the first three months, and at last the attention of the college doctor was called to them. He just simply said, “Buy an ounce of boracic acid and put it on them.” So it was bought, and, wonder of wonders! it acted almost like a miracle.
“I can’t bear this doctor,” many of the girls used to say.
“Well, I shall always feel grateful to him,” she would rejoin. “He cured my eyes when I was beginning to think they were incurable.”
That was probably the greatest benefit she derived from being there.