She obeyed, finding her employer still reclining in an armed chair, looking as if she had not moved since Lally’s previous visit. She had a book in one hand, a paper cutter in the other. She recognized Lally with a sort of pleased surprise.
“Ah, back again, and punctual!” she exclaimed, glancing at a toy clock in white and blue enamel on the low mantel-piece. “I had a great many misgivings after you went away, Miss Bird. Five pounds is a good deal of money to one in your position in life, and the world is so full of swindlers. I have already written to the ladies to whom you referred me. I suppose I should have waited for their answer before engaging you, but I am such an impulsive creature, I always do just as I feel at the spur of the moment. My husband calls me ‘a child of impulse,’ and the words describe me exactly. I’m glad to see you back. I don’t know, I’m sure, what I should have said to Mr. Blight if you had decamped, for he does not appreciate my ability to read faces. The time I got taken in with my last cook—the one we found lying with her head in a brass kettle, and the kitchen fire gone out, at the very hour when I had a large company assembled to dine with me—Charles said, ‘Fudge, don’t let us hear any more about physiognomy.’ You see, I engaged the woman because her face was all that could be desired. And since that time Charles won’t hear a word about physiognomy.”
Lally sat down, obeying a wave of Mrs. Blight’s hand. That “child of impulse,” silly, garrulous, and puffed up with self-importance and vulgarity, pursued her theme until she had exhausted it.
“You are looking very well, Miss Bird,” she said, changing the subject, “but all in black—why, you are quite a black-bird, I declare,” and she laughed at her own wit. “Are you in mourning? Have you lately lost a friend?”
“Yes, madam,” replied Lally sorrowfully, “I have lately lost the only friend I had in the whole world.”
“Oh, indeed. That is sad; but I do hope you won’t wear a long face and go moping about the house, frightening the children,” said Mrs. Blight, with a candor that was less charming than oppressive to her newly engaged governess. “You must do as the poet so romantically says:
“‘Wear a smile,
Though the cold heart runs darkly to ruin the while.’
“If he doesn’t say that, it’s some such thing, and a very pretty sentiment too. And now let us discuss your new duties.”
She proceeded to sketch Lally’s duties much as the housemaid had done. Then she gave a history of each one of the five children who were to be under Lally’s supervision. Three of the children were boys, and their fond mother described them as paragons. Her girls also were extraordinary in their mental and physical attractions, “having once been taken at the Zoological gardens during a visit to London, by a strange gentleman, for the children of a nobleman!”