“You did it beautiful, my dear,” and then hurried away.
Hazel hardly grasped her words, for George Canninge had turned to bow as he went out, and the glance he then gave set her trembling as she stood with one hand resting upon the desk; for it seemed to her that every one must have seen that look, and she began to ask herself if she was mad to let that man’s presence fill her with thoughts that seemed to agitate her strangely.
Chapter Twenty Two.
A Lesson in Teaching.
After the plain manner in which the Reverend Henry Lambent had shown himself disposed to take the part of the young schoolmistress against his sisters, the attacks made by Rebecca and Beatrice were not so open; but they found many little ways of displaying in a petty spirit that they were by no means her friends.
Ladies by birth, it was hardly to be expected that they should stoop to pettiness, but years of residence in a little country place with few people of their own class for associates, and that mutual friction which is an imperceptible popular educator in manners, had made them what they were, and disposed to grow more little of mind as the years went on. Their lives were too smooth and regular, too uneventful. A school examination, a blanket club, and a harvest festival, were the great points of their existence, and though they visited in the parish, and were supposed to make themselves acquainted with the cares and sorrows of the poor, their calls were made in a perfunctory spirit, and they did not possess that simple power of appealing to the heart which wins the confidence of rich and poor. Unfortunately, then, they grew narrower as their years became more, and, at the same time, from the want of some good, genuine, honest troubles to take them out of themselves, acidity began to cark and corrode their natures, and work a considerable change. If Rebecca Lambent had met with a man who possessed good firm qualities and been married, she would doubtless have turned out a quiet matronly body, ready to smile at trifles, and make the best of things; but unfortunately the right he had never presented himself, and Rebecca had become a thorough district-visiting old maid, as narrow as could be, and ready to look upon a child who had not read “The Pilgrim’s Progress” as on the high road to destruction.
Beatrice Lambent’s heart was still tender. Rebecca said that she quite hated men. Beatrice thought the declaration quite suitable, as far as her sister was concerned, but her own hatreds were directed at the other sex, and Hazel Thorne was made the scapegoat in her eyes to bear the sins of others. For as the days glided by, she felt a growing dislike to the young schoolmistress, who was always committing some grievous error, her last being that of accepting the glass of water offered to her by George Canninge.
It would be going far to say that Beatrice Lambent would gladly have put poison in that water had she dared, but certainly she would gladly have dashed it in the recipient’s face.