“Never.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen, Miss Flowers.”
“What things have you been taught?”
“English subjects of different sorts,” replied Nora. “A little music—oh, I love music, I do love music!—and a little French; and I can speak Irish,” she added, raising her beautiful, dark-blue eyes, and fixing them on the face of the head-mistress. That winsome face touched Miss Flowers' heart.
“I will do what I can for you,” she said. “For the present you had better study alone. At the end of a week or so I shall be able to determine what form to put you in. Now, go back to the schoolroom and ask Miss Goring to come to me.”
Miss Goring was the English mistress. Miss Flowers saw her alone for a minute or two.
“Do what you can for the Irish girl,” she said. “She is a very pretty creature; she is evidently ignorant; but I think she has plenty of talent.”
Miss Goring went back, and during the rest of the morning devoted herself to Nora. Nora had varied and strange acquirements at her finger's ends. She was up in all sorts of folk lore; she could clothe her speech in picturesque and striking language. She could repeat poetry from Sir Walter Scott, from Shakspere, from the old Irish bards themselves; but her grammar was defective, although her reading aloud was very pretty and sweet. Her knowledge of history was vague, and might be best described by the expression, up and down. She knew all about the Waldenses; she had a vivid picture in her mind's eye of St. Bartholomew's Eve. The French Revolution appalled and, at the same time, attracted her. The death of Charles I. drew tears from her eyes; but she knew nothing whatever of the chronological arrangements of history; and the youngest girl in the school could have put her to shame with regard to the Magna Charta. It was just the same with every branch of knowledge which Nora had even a smattering of.
At last the great test of all came—could she play or could she not? She had spoken often of her passionate love for music. Miss Goring took her into the drawing room, away from the other girls.