"N—no—that is, I'd like to, but I can't."
"If you 'liked' to do it, I do not see what is to prevent you."
"Oh, it's not that sort of liking. I mean I'd like to like him, I do like him, but not in the way he wants."
"It is no affair of mine," said Miss Hancock, "not in the least, but I would urge you not to be too hasty in your reply. Think over it, weigh the matter judicially before you decide upon what, after all, is the most important decision a young girl is ever called upon to make."
"I hate myself," broke out Fanny, who had been listening with bent head, and finger tracing the pattern on the cloth of the table beside her. "I hate myself. People are always doing me kindnesses and I am always acting like a beast, so it seems to me, but how can I help it?" lifting her head suddenly with a bright smile. "If I were to marry them all, I'd have about fifty husbands, now—more!—so what am I to do?"
Miss Hancock sniffed; she had never been in the same position herself, so could give no advice from experience. The question rather irritated her, and a smart lecture rose to her lips on the impropriety and immodesty of girls allowing people of the other sex to "care for them," etc., etc., but the lecture did not pass her lips.
Since entering the house of the Lamberts the demon of Order had swelled Jinnee-like in her breast, and the seven devils of spring cleaning, each of whose right hands is a cake of soap, and whose left hands are scrubbing-brushes, arose and ramped. The whole place and the people therein, from the bell-pull to the cats'-breakfast-destined haddock, from Susannah to her mistress, exercised a fascination upon Miss Hancock beyond the power of words to describe. She had measured Susannah from her sand-coloured hair to her slipshod feet, gauged her capacity for work and her moral ineptitude, and had already dismissed her, in her mind; as for the rest of the business, the ordering of Fanny and of her father, whom she divined, the setting of the house to rights and the righting of all the Lamberts' affairs, mundane and extra-mundane—this, she felt, would be a work, which accomplished, she could say, "I have not lived in vain." All this might be lost by a lecture misplaced.
"Of course you will please yourself," she said. "I would only say do nothing rashly; and in whatever way you decide, I hope you will always be our friend. You are very young to have the cares of a house and the ordering of servants thrust upon you, and any assistance or advice I can give you, I should be very glad to give."
"Thanks so much!"
"I would be very glad to call some day and have a good long chat with you; my experience in housekeeping might be of assistance."