CHAPTER VI
MARK TAPLEY'S KIND OF DAYS
PHYLLIS was finding her occupation trying. The children had not been accustomed to obedience, and Muriel proved intractable; Phyllis could neither win her affection nor subdue her by sternness. Lionel minded her because he loved her; in a week's time the boy had become her doglike adorer, and Phyllis loved him with pitying tenderness. The baby was like a little garden patch with the sun shining upon it through the tree branches, in alternate sunshine and shadow, and her obedience was patchy, too; no child more properly deserved the insignia of "a little curl right in the middle of her forehead." But she was only the baby; no one could take very seriously the misdemeanors of a mite of three, and Gladys was a dear mite when she was not the other sort.
It was hard to assume the charge of three children for six hours a day; hard to bring them, and herself as well, into the discipline of stated hours and tasks; not easy to take them out to walk, and feel perfectly independent and indifferent to the possibility of meeting old acquaintances when thus employed.
But the hardest thing about her new life to Phyllis was the insight it gave her into a manner of living which shocked and tortured her, for Phyllis was a conscientious girl, and the first actual contact with the worldly side of the world is bitter to such as she. Mrs. Haines did not love her children. Sometimes, when they were beautifully dressed, she flattered them and devoured them with kisses; but more frequently she repulsed them, scolded them petulantly and unjustly, and answered their questions with a fretful "Don't bother me! I don't know; ask Miss Wyndham." Sometimes she would say in their hearing that she detested children; that they all ought to be fastened up in the barrel Holmes suggested and fed through the bunghole; and that she would give anything if she were free to have a good time like other young women. And Phyllis could see Lionel's lips quiver and then set hard at these speeches, and she knew the little lad understood that though he had a mother, he had not her love, but was a burden to her.
It made her sick at heart; less experienced than her tiny charges, she had never for a moment dreamed that a woman who had children could do less than love them beyond all the world, holding no pleasure, no admiration, worth a thought while her babies' little arms clung to her. But Mrs. Haines boasted the flattery she received. Evidently husband, as well as children, was nothing to her beside her idea of pleasure; and honest Phyllis went home daily, heavy in mind and foot, weary with loathing more than with work.
Tom saw that she was looking blue and ill, and he made it his business to come home her way and meet her, and try to cheer her into forgetfulness of the annoyances of which he was ignorant; for Phyllis could not reconcile it with her standard of honor to talk to any one of what she saw in the home to which she had been admitted. Yet she longed to ask some one if all the world, but her own narrow one, was like this new one; Jessamy and Bab knew no better than she, and her aunt was too ill to be troubled.
Mrs. Haines soon discovered the handsome young fellow who came to meet her governess, and rallied Phyllis on what she called "her conquest." "I hear you have an admirer, my dear," she said.
Phyllis flushed scarlet with indignation. "Tom is a dear boy, like a brother to all of us," she said. "There isn't the least silly thing about him; we are only girls, and we don't want nor think of flirtations."
Mrs. Haines laughed with contemptuous good nature. "Would it be silly in him to admire you?" she asked. "As to the rest of it, girls you may be, but children you are not; I was no older than you when I married, and am only seven years older than you are now."