"I should think not! And why, pray, should he have pitched on Deda?"
"Oh, why should any one pitch on me?" Deleah asks, lays down knife and fork, spreads hands abroad, as if inviting with exaggerated humility an inspection of her poor claims to favouritism.
"But—if it were Mr. Boult I think I can understand why it might be Deleah," Mrs. Day said slowly, looking down. She was remembering how her poor husband had made no secret of the fact that the younger girl was his pet; and she recalled also that for her father's sake it was Deleah who treated the arrogant, tyrannical man with unfailing respect and courtesy.
"Yes. And I can understand it too, mama," Deleah softly said.
"Well, them that live'll see," Emily remarked sententiously as she removed the remains of the sago pudding.
CHAPTER XII
The Attractive Deleah
An engagement had been secured for Deleah Day as assistant English governess at a ladies' school. At Miss Chaplin's seminary she was employed in hearing lessons learnt by heart from Brewers' Guide to Knowledge, Mangnall's Questions, Mrs. Markham's History of England; in reading aloud while her pupils tatted or crocheted mats and antimacassars; in struggling with them through the intricacies, never mastered by herself, of Rule of Three and Vulgar Fractions, from nine every morning till five every afternoon; with the exception of the Wednesday, when there was a half-holiday, and the Saturday, when there was no school at all.
The slightness of Deleah's figure and the fragility of her small face, with its innocent, unconscious allurement, were increased by the black garments she still wore. To cast off her mourning for her unhappy father would be, she felt, a slight to him.
"It is as if Bessie had forgotten," she said to herself, seeing her sister in the blues and pinks in which she began as summer came on again to array herself, for supper and the Manchester man. "I do not forget."