'Not at all; and she seems to get on so nicely with the servants. They all adore her.'
'Indeed!'
'My last governess, Miss Smythe-Smythe was always at war with them.'
'How?'
'They never paid her sufficient deference. Oh, what a nuisance that woman was; yet we paid her forty pounds a year—actually what we pays the cook, my dear.'
To be near his young mistress, to watch over her, as he thought, and to be able to see her from time to time, old Archie had located himself in a humble lodging in Moscow Road, not far from the square, where he lived with the strictest frugality, fearing that a time might come when his 'three hunner pounds,' or what remained of them, might be of service to her, 'as hained gear helps weel,' and often, with more patience than even a lover might have had, he promenaded the square for hours, watching for a sight of her at the school-room windows, or till she came forth with her pupils to walk in Kensington Gardens—watching for her till he in turn was watched, as one bent on something nefarious, by the policeman at the corner.
And ere long the two little girls began to wonder who the funny old man was that so often hovered near them in their walks, who treated their governess with such profound deference and devotion, and was never unprovided with chocolate creams and so forth for them—'sweeties for the bairns,' as he called them.
But often Alison sat up in her little white bed, in her bare and rather comfortless room, in the darkness of the silent night, and, looking at the stars, would ask why she was so lonely in the world now—she who was born with the prospect of a very different state of existence! Then would come all her dream-memories of the past, with those other dreams of what might be, did fortune prove more kind. How long it seemed ago since she had her father to nurse and Cadbury to shun—longer still since she had known the joy of Bevil's love, and the stolen meetings under the solemn and whispering beeches of Chilcote.
Chilcote was lonely; but how lovely it seemed to her in memory now! She even found herself at times now indulging in the two conundrums—the modern pessimist's speculations—Is civilisation a failure, and is life worth living?
The monotony of the school-room was now occasionally broken by visits—few and far between, certainly—of the eldest daughter of the house, Miss De Jobbyns, who had returned from a sojourn with some friends at Hastings—a young lady rather loud in tone and fast in manner. She had early discovered that Alison was dexterous in the way of embroidering, and thus kept her little hands busy, when not otherwise occupied, in tracing out her monogram and crest—for she had that, of course—in the corners of handkerchiefs, interspersed with forget-me-nots, rose-sprays, and fern-leaves.