The question was really superfluous. By the aid of the sixth sense given to her sex in these little matters, Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson was already fully informed as to what George Norris thought of the new governess. Moreover she had been informed so plainly, that although the new governess had not been four and twenty hours under her roof the subject threatened already to become a matter of some concern.
“I think she is extremely nice.” The answer of George Norris was simple, unstudied, genuinely sincere. And it was very much the answer Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson anticipated, except that she had not looked for it to be quite so candid.
The response of Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson to what almost amounted to enthusiasm on the part of George Norris was rather formal. “She speaks nicely,” she said. “And of course that is of great importance in a governess.”
George Norris, who for all his remarkable array of decorations seemed a very simple young man, naïvely said that he supposed it must be of great importance for a governess to speak nicely, yet he may have thought privately, had he ever been tempted to give thought to the subject, that it was in the nature of a governess to do so.
In fact, although he did not put that view into words, his tone rather implied it. But Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson, who subsconciously followed his train of ideas, felt it to be her duty to convict him of error.
“Governesses don’t always, I assure you,” she said. “Our last one had quite a cockney accent.”
George Norris seemed surprised at the revelation.
“I am sure I hope Miss Cass will suit us.” The tone of Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson did not sound very optimistic. “One finds governesses such a difficult class. You see they are not always ladies.”
George Norris betrayed more surprise. But Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson’s confession was not without a certain method.
She was by no means well pleased that her guest should have walked into Clavering with Miss Cass. He was a young man who in the course of four years had won really remarkable military distinction, but his hostess could not disguise from herself that his knowledge of the world had hardly kept pace with his martial renown. In a word he lacked social experience.