The Governess

by Julie M. Lippmann

"No, ma'am! There ain't no one in this world like her. She is the best, the generousest, the most self-sacrificin' soul on earth—that she is, and I've known her ever since she was a child. If any one was to ask me the name of the woman I've most call to honor an' love, I'd say 'twas Isabel Blake Severance an' never stop a minute to think it over."

And both Nan and Delia had long ago decided that while other women might be more beautiful, no one could have softer, sunnier hair than Aunt Isabel, nor truer, tenderer eyes, nor a prettier nose nor a sweeter mouth. And Nan was quite confident that if one hunted the whole globe over one could not find dimples more entirely winning nor hands whose touch was so absolutely soothing and soft.

But Miss Severance could never be brought to admit these important facts, though Nan often sought to convince her of their truth. She was too busy a woman to have time to think whether she were beautiful or not.

"Good is the thing," she would say, in her brisk fashion. "If I can look in the glass and see the reflection of a good woman there, I have no right to regret that she is not a beautiful one."

Just now she was upstairs, busied with some matter of mysterious importance from which Nan was excluded. She and Delia had been shut into her room all the afternoon. Nan had ample time and opportunity for the manufacture of her own Christmas gifts, Aunt Isabel being so much occupied, behind closed door, with hers.

For quite a time now Nan had been forced to station herself in the regions below stairs, where she would hear the bell if it rang, so that Delia might be free to give all her attention to Miss Severance. Evidently great things were in operation above. Nan wondered what it could all be about.

Christmas had lost much of its joyousness this year, but still there was a little flavor of merriment left. Aunt Isabel had no sympathy with the hark-from-the-tombs-a-doleful-sound attitude. She thought it was one's duty to be as cheery and hopeful as possible, and not to add to the misery of the world at large by forcing it to witness one's private grief. She and Nan had their hours of tender mourning and sincere regret, but it was always Miss Severance's desire that no unwholesome brooding should be indulged in by either of them.

So the girl tried to restrain the tears that would rise at the thought of these saddened holidays, and endeavored to bring her mind to bear on more happy subjects. She thought of her plans for the next day; she made a mental recount of the gifts she had prepared, and then, somehow against her will, her memory took her back to that morning when she had heard of her father's death and listened to Miss Severance's story, and she lived over again those intense moments when it almost seemed to her her mother had been restored to her in this rare friend. The simple history had a peculiar fascination for the girl, and she liked to think that it was here, in these very rooms, that it all had been enacted.

She liked to look into those books of Miss Severance's that had her mother's name upon the fly-leaf, and she liked to think that they were given to "Bell with Florence's fond love."

Miss Severance had several photographs of her mother as a girl that Nan had never seen, and she was fond of looking them over and exclaiming at the "old-fashioned" frocks and quaintly arranged hair, and wondering whether this happy-looking girl ever discovered the sacrifice her friend had made for her.