“She has left off teaching, then, I conclude?”
“Yes. She had a little bit of money left her by a bachelor uncle, safely invested in railway stock, and yielding about two hundred a year. This, with her own savings, made her an independent woman, and she made up her mind to realize her own ideal of a useful life—an ideal which had been developing in her mind for a good many years—a life which was to be serviceable to others, and yet pleasant to herself.”
“Do you mean that she joined some sisterhood?”
“No, no, Mr. Dalbrook; Sarah Newton is much too fond of her own way, much too independent and fiery a spirit, to place herself in a position where other people would think for her, and where she would be obliged to obey. She told me her plan of life very frankly. ‘I have about two hundred and sixty pounds a year,’ she said; ‘I can live comfortably upon half that money, if I live after a plan of my own; and I can do a great deal of good with the other half if I do it in my own way. I am elderly and plain. If I were to live amongst small gentilities I should be a nobody, and in all probability I should be considered a bore. I shall take a lodging in a poor neighbourhood, furnish my rooms with the utmost comfort, treat myself to a good piano, and collect my little library book by book from the second-hand booksellers. I shall spend half my days in going quietly about among the poor young women of the district—I ought to know what girls are after nearly forty years’ teaching and managing the species—and I shall spend half my income in doing as much good to them as I can, in my own unorthodox way.’ I knew the good that brave little soul had done in this parish, in her quiet, unpretentious fashion, and I felt no doubt she would carry out her plan.”
“Have you seen her since she left you?”
“Yes, I went to see her last June when I had a fortnight’s holiday in London. I found her in a shabby old house in Lambeth, not very far from St. Thomas’s Hospital; but dingy as the house looked outside, our good Sally’s apartments were the picture of comfort. I found her as happy as a bird. Her plan of life had answered her highest expectations. ‘My friends are legion,’ she said, ‘but I haven’t a single gentility among them.’ Sally is a desperate Radical, you must know.”
“Will you give me her address, that I may write and ask her permission to call upon her?”
“You shall have the address, but I doubt if she will feel disposed to receive you. She will count you among the gentilities.”
“I must try my chance at any rate. I want her to throw some light upon the history of one of her earliest pupils. Did you ever hear her talk of Cheriton Chase and the Strangway family?”
“My dear sir, I have heard her talk of any number of places, and any number of people. I used to tell her she must be a female Methuselah to have passed through so many experiences. She was very fond of telling stories of the families in which she had lived, but though I used to listen I remember very little about them. My girls would remember better, I have no doubt. They can give you chapter and verse, I dare say; so the best thing you can do is to eat your luncheon with us, and then you can ask them as many questions as you like.”