I am wondering if he makes those noises now. Mother was always a little gentler and more yielding to him than I, so perhaps the house is quieter since I left. I don't see them very much. Not possessing a carriage, and the journey by train being a little cross country, we do not exchange many visits. Peter won't allow mother to come alone, and of course when he comes everything is spoilt. He does not believe in private confidential talks between women. He says that most of it is ill-natured gossip, and I have never heard mother say an unkind word of anybody in her life.
I did not mean to write of Peter this morning. My head was full of Miss Fairbrother.
Such a delightful letter from her. Dimbie was as much interested in it as I. She says—
"'I am thirty-five to-day. Yes, I have reached half the allotted age of man. The Psalmist was a little mean and skimpy, I think, to limit one's years to threescore and ten. Probably he was old for his age, having crowded a good deal into his life. And all those wives and sons of his were enough to make any man feel tired.'"
I looked up and laughed.
"Go on," said Dimbie.
"'Thirty-five will appear to twenty-three a great and mysterious age—mysterious in the way that death is mysterious; a state at which to arrive at some dim and future period—very dim, very far off when you are but twenty-three.
"'And yet my years sit lightly upon me. I can still run, though not so swiftly as of old. I can still laugh, though India is very hot and very sad in some of its aspects. I still wear cotton frocks—perhaps the last foolishly; but what is one to do in an Indian climate, and when one has to count up the pennies in readiness for the old age which must come? Muslin I eschew as being too airy and girlish for one of rounded proportions, but mercerised cotton is my salvation. Praised be the Lancashire cotton mills! Do you happen to have met with mercerised cotton? It is deceitful, for it tries to cheat you into believing that when you don it you straightway have a silken appearance. It may deceive you, but it certainly does not deceive the other women of the station. You read in their uplifted glance "six-three," which means sixpence three farthings. You don't care dreadfully, for are you not cool and most suitably attired as a governess?
"'You ask me, dear Marguerite, what I am doing. I am still existing in a pink bungalow endeavouring to teach two poor, hot, sticky children. Of course it is cool now, but the hot weather will return once more, and then they are going home to that cool, green garden whose other name is England, and my work will be finished. This makes the fourth batch of children who have left me during the years I have been here. And now that garden is calling me, calling me with a voice not to be resisted, and I too am "going home."
"'You, little old pupil, will be one of the first persons upon whom I shall leave cards. Marguerite married is a person of importance now. Her two fair pigtails went "up" long ago, but she will always remain the little old pupil to me.