"Who's talking down there?" came the governess's cry. "Here you, the new girl, Laura what's—your-name, come up to the map."
A huge map of England had been slung over an easel; Laura was required to take the pointer and show where Stafford lay. With the long stick in her hand, she stood stupid and confused. In this exigency, it did not help her that she knew, from hear-say, just how England looked; that she could see, in fancy, its ever-green grass, thick hedges, and spreading trees; its never-dry rivers; its hoary old cathedrals; its fogs, and sea-mists, and over-populous cities. She stood face to face with the most puzzling map in the world—a map seared and scored with boundary-lines, black and bristling with names. She could not have laid her finger on London at this moment, and as for Stafford, it might have been in the moon.
While the class straggled along the verandah at the end of the hour, Inez came up to Laura's side.
"I say, you shouldn't have said that about her mother." She nodded mysteriously.
"Why not?" asked Laura, and coloured at the thought that she had again, without knowing it, been guilty of a FAUX PAS.
Inez looked round to see that Bertha was not within hearing, then put her lips to Laura's ear.
"She drinks."
Laura gaped incredulous at the girl, her young eyes full of horror. From actual experience, she hardly knew what drunkenness meant; she had hitherto associated it only with the lowest class of Irish agricultural labourer, or with those dreadful white women who lived, by choice, in Chinese Camps. That there could exist a mother who drank was unthinkable ... outside the bounds of nature.
"Oh, how awful!" she gasped, and turned pale with excitement. Inez could not help giggling at the effect produced by her words—the new girl was a 'rum stick' and no mistake—but as Laura's consternation persisted, she veered about.
"Oh, well, I don't know for certain if that's it. But there's something awfully queer about her."