“Indeed,” Eleanor broke in, “I don’t want to be rude. I’m sorry I did speak so pertly. But oh, Miss Ellen, I wish you could see the trees my mother draws! How can I say I like those things of Mr. Henley’s? Like green seaweeds on the end of a pink hay-fork! And we’ve lots of old etchings at home, with such trees in them! Like—well, like nothing but real trees and photographs.”
Miss Ellen took Eleanor’s hand and drew her towards her.
“My dear,” said she, “you have plenty of sense; and have evidently used it to appreciate what your dear mother has shown and taught to you. Use it now, my dear, to ask yourself if it is reasonable to expect that men who could draw like the old masters would teach in ordinary girls’ schools, or, if they would, that school-mistresses could afford to pay them properly without a much greater charge to the parents of pupils than they would be willing to bear. You have had great advantages at home, and have learnt enough to make you able to say very smart things; but fault-finding is an easy trade, my dear, and it would be wiser as well as kinder to see what good you can get from poor Mr. Henley’s lessons, as to the use of the brush and colours, instead of neglecting your drawing because you don’t like his style, which, after all, you needn’t copy when you sketch from nature yourself. I will tell you, dear child, that my sister and I have talked this matter over before. Clever young people are apt to think that their stupid elders have never perceived what their brilliant young wits can put straight with half-a-dozen words. But I used to draw a little myself,” continued Miss Ellen very modestly, “and I have never liked Mr. Henley’s style. But he is such a very good old man, and so poor, that my sister has shrunk from changing. Still, of course our pupils are the first consideration, and we should have had another master if a much better one could have been got. But Mr. Markham, who is the only other one within reach, is not so painstaking and patient with his pupils as Mr. Henley; and though his style is rather better, it is not so very superior as to lead us, on the whole, to turn poor Mr. Henley away for him. As to Madame,” said Miss Ellen, in conclusion, “she was quite right, my dear, to contrast your negligence with Lucy’s industry, and your smart speech was not in good taste towards her, because you know that she knows nothing of drawing, and could not dispute the point with you. There she comes,” added Miss Ellen rather nervously. She was afraid of Madame.
“I’ll go and beg her pardon, dear Miss Ellen,” said Eleanor penitently, and rushing out of the room, she met Madame in the passage, and we heard her pouring forth a torrent of apology and self-accusation in a style peculiar to herself. If in her youth and cleverness she was at times a little sharp-tongued and self-opinionated, the vehemence of her self-reproaches when she saw herself in fault was always a joke with those who knew her.
“Eleanor’s confessions are only to be matched by her favourite Jeremy Taylor’s,” said Jack one day.
“She’s just as bumptious next time, all the same,” said Clement. He had been disputing with Eleanor, and the generous grace of meeting an apology half-way was no part of his character.
He had an arbitrary disposition, in which Eleanor to some extent shared. He controlled it to fairness in discussions with men, but with men only. With Eleanor, who persisted in thinking for herself, and was not slow to express her thoughts, he had many hot disputes, in which he often seemed unable to be fair, and did not always trouble himself to be reasonable.
By his own account he “detested girls with opinions.” Abroad he was politely contemptuous of feminine ideas; at home he was apt to be rudely so.
But this was only one, and a later development of many-sided Clement.
And the subject is a digression, and has no business here.