"Not boarding school," the mother pleaded. "I couldn't be parted from her now."
"Who said anything about boarding schools? There are plenty of day schools. None of them are perfect, I know. But it can't be put off. All the danger isn't out of doors. Let her go and get a little honest mud on the bottom of her skirts, and come home every evening to have it brushed off."
The poor woman struggled with her trouble. "It isn't that," she said brokenly, "but—but, I can't explain it. There are things that don't brush off—ever. She is so ignorant of what the world thinks of—of people like me. They'll teach her it all at school; they'll teach her to despise her m-m-mother...."
She broke down and, burying her face in her hands, wept the unrestrained tears of her class.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" she moaned. "I knew it must come. She's so pretty—so pretty; such a little aristocrat. I'm only her mother by accident, really. And she'll make fine friends and be asked out, and wonder why she can't ask 'em back, and I'll have to tell her: 'Nelly, dear, it's because your mother is only a poor woman that father married to save her name, that lets lodgings to her betters for a living, and wouldn't let you go to your own people when they asked for you; and you can never have a friend of your own class as long as you live with her.'"
Lady Anne kept her arm across the broad, bowed shoulders.
"Let's try it," she said cheerily. "I'll answer for Nelly, and I think I can answer for the others. You have no conception how the world is changing. I have the very school in my eye, too. I know the principal. Sunlight and science, and knowledge that's innocent because it's thorough, and open windows upon life that blow away all the whispers in the corners, and a proper reverence for the body that, after all, is all we're sure of. As for the money—well, I'm a meddlesome old body, and you can heap coals of fire on my head by letting me be responsible. I don't blame you for spending money on her clothes: besides—Sharland College is dressy."
She wrote to her friend that night:
"Dear Louisa:
"I'm sending you a little girl who is the daughter of a dear, dead chum of mine. She's extravagantly pretty, very dull, quite poor—is being brought up as though she were an heiress and has a heart that I believe will prove a greater danger to her than her face or her poverty. For God's sake, Louisa, find out if she has any special talent that will help her to a living, and ground her and grind her until she's taken hold. I'm fond of the child, and shouldn't die happy if I thought there was any risk of her joining the one profession for which previous experience isn't essential.