"Well, Miss Beryl, I only hope you will always be so fond of your governess," remarked Lucy.
"What do you mean?" asked Beryl quickly, for her nurse's words seemed to be charged with special significance. "Do you think I shall change?"
"People often do change, especially when they are so hot at first," said Lucy.
"But I shall not change," returned Beryl indignantly; "and you need not speak as if you thought I should, Lucy."
[CHAPTER XV]
FALLING INTO TEMPTATION
THE children settled very happily to their daily tasks with Miss Burton. At first, the long hours of confinement were felt to be irksome. Beryl's pen was apt to drop from her fingers, and her mind to wander from her work, as the sound of the sea came to her through the open window, and the warm sunshine and fragrant breeze made her long to fling books aside, and roam abroad at will again. But a word or touch from Miss Burton would recall her attention, for Beryl was really anxious to do well and please her governess. She felt ashamed of knowing so little, and was anxious by great endeavours to make up for lost time. Miss Burton made their steps to knowledge as smooth and pleasant as possible for her young pupils.
On sounding the depths of their ignorance, she was appalled to discover how profound it was; but happily, the children, though backward, were neither slow nor dull. No one could call Beryl a stupid child. If she knew little of books, she had picked up a good deal of information about the common things of life in the course of her free-and-easy childhood.
Miss Burton was surprised to find how quickly Beryl learned when once she began to apply herself. The soil of her mind promised to yield all the richer harvest for having lain fallow so long.
The children were fortunate in the governess chosen for them. Hettie Burton was too young and too childlike to have acquired any formal, pedantic mode of imparting instruction, whilst, at the same time, her intellectual powers were such as would have qualified her to teach far older pupils. She had a natural aptitude for teaching, and did not find her work a drudgery. She varied the children's tasks so skilfully, that neither mind nor body could grow weary before lessons were over. She laid no unnecessary restrictions on their freedom.