"It has been all I had to do," rejoined the governess wistfully. "For many, many years I have had nothing else. But now all that is changed, and—as it is half-past one, and I hear Delia coming up to announce luncheon, I'll dismiss my class, and declare school over for to-day."
"That is always the way," mused Nan, "whenever I refer to her and try to start her telling about herself she veers off and talks of something else. Queer about her traveling so much, though. I wonder how she came to do it—when she's so poor. She never said straight out she was some one's companion, and I don't think a governess would be taken all over the globe like that."
While the ice lasted Nan had many a good hour upon her skates. Miss Blake too donned hers, and at these times the tables were turned and Nan became the patient teacher, the governess the obedient pupil.
"My ankles are weak," pleaded the pupil in apology for persistent failure.
"Exercise 'em and they'll grow strong!" declared the intrepid instructor in peremptory tones.
"It's no use, I can't reverse, Nan!"
"Pooh! 'Never say can't till you've proved that the task is impossible,'" quoted Nan, with a gleam of mischief in her eyes.
"You're real mean, so there!" responded Miss Blake in return with such a good imitation of her own querulous tone that the girl burst into a shout of laughter, and the two started off again to make another, perhaps futile attempt, at the difficult feat, until, by the latter part of the winter, Miss Blake acquitted herself so creditably that her teacher regarded her with pardonable pride, and declared,
"There, now! You ought to be 'all primmed up with majestick pride.' You skate as well as anybody now, and you've got rid of every particle of nervousness."
There were many things beside skating that the governess set herself to accomplish during these months, and Mrs. Newton often took her to task for working so hard.