"Well, it's all the same; she had never heard of it."
Rose was witty enough to take fearful reprisals on those who offended her; but, although she thus avenged herself, she was always sure to be worsted in the war of words. Nothing she could say cut so deep as the most stupid reflection on her dress or poverty. No sarcasm she could frame told like the old—but never too old—reference to governesses. Nevertheless, her vivacity and humour in some measure softened the ill impression created by her poverty. She amused the girls so much, that they never allowed their insolence to be more than a passing thing. Often would she make the whole school merry with some exquisitely ludicrous parody of Mrs. Wirrelston or Miss Smith. The latter was her especial butt. She revelled in quizzing her. She knew well enough that the laughers, with the treachery of children, first enjoyed the joke, and then repeated it to Miss Smith, to enjoy the joker's punishment, and to curry favour with the governess. No matter; Rose knew she was sure to be betrayed, yet her daring animal spirits were constantly inciting her to make fun of her ridiculous mistress.
Miss Smith was a starch virago. Bred to the profession of governess, she had considerable acquirements—of which she was very vain—and great sense of the "responsibility" of her situation, which showed itself in a morbid watchfulness over the "morals of her young charges." Her modesty was delicate and easily alarmed; nothing, for instance, would induce her to mention sparrows before gentlemen—those birds having rather a libertine reputation in natural history—she called them "little warblers." Again: the word belly was carefully erased from Goldsmith's History of England, and stomach substituted in the margin. Rose once pointed this out to the girl standing next to her at class, and was duly punished for her "impropriety."
Miss Smith was not handsome. Her complexion was of a bilious brown, mottled with pimples. Her nose was thin and pointed; the nostrils pinched up, as if she were always smelling her own breath, and that breath stronger but not sweeter than the rose. Her lips thin and colourless. Her figure tall and fleshless. There was a rigidity and primness in her whole appearance, which lent itself but too easily to caricature; and Rose, whose good nature would have spared a kinder person, had no remorse in ridiculing the ungenerous mistress, who visited upon her and her sister the sins of their father.
On the day selected for our glimpse into this school, Rose was shivering over a long task, which had been given her for the following audacity. Miss Smith had been "reviling in good set terms" the character of Meredith Vyner. Rose's blood had mounted to her cheek, but she was silent, conscious that any retort would only indulge her mistress, by showing that the abuse of her father was a sore subject. She affected to have lost her copy of Goldsmith, and to be in great concern about it. As it was only a common schoolbook, bound in mottled calf, Miss Pinkerton could not understand her anxiety about it, sarcastically adding, "My papa doesn't care how many books I have. He can afford it." "Oh, it isn't the book," replied Rose confidentially, "it's the binding! Real Smithskin!"
Blanche and Miss Pinkerton both laughed; and the latter immediately informed Miss Smith of the joke, and of Blanche's participation. For this offence they were both punished; but the name remained: to this day the mottled calf binding is by the girls called Smithskin.
It was near the breaking up, and the elder girls, with the horrible servility of children of both sexes when at school, had set on foot a subscription to present Mrs. Wirrelston and Miss Smith with some token of their regard. Miss Hoskins had put her name down for thirty shillings. Others had subscribed a pound, and others ten shillings; even the younger girls had put down five shillings each. When the list was brought to Rose and Blanche, they said they had no money.
"Of course not," said Miss Hoskins; "what's the use of asking them? You will ask the servants next."
Blanche raised her mild face, and said,—
"I would subscribe if I could; but how is it possible? You girls come to school with ten pounds or more in your pockets, and you have other presents besides. Papa refuses to allow us pocket-money—says we can have no use for it."