She leant back against the stand, staring at me with such big eyes, and then she said the very last thing in the world which I expected to hear.
“May I come with you? Will you let me come too some day?”
Come with me! Rachel Greaves, with her solemn face, and dragged-back hair, and her proper conversation. To tear about the fields! I nearly had a fit.
“I suppose you want to botanise?” I asked feebly, and she shook her head and said—
“No; I want to talk to you—I want to do just what you do when you are alone.”
“Scramble through the hedges, and jump the streams, and swing on the gates, and go bird’s-nesting in the hedges?”
She gave a gulp of dismay, but stuck to her guns.
“Y–es! At least, I could try—you could teach me. I’ve learned such a number of things in my life, but I don’t know how to play. That part of my education has been neglected.”
“Wherever did you go to school? What a dreadful place it must have been!”
“I never went to school; I had governesses at home, and I have no brothers nor sisters; I am very much interested in girls of my own age, especially poor girls, and try to work among them, but I am not very successful. They are afraid of me, and I can’t enter into their amusements; but if I could learn to romp and be lively, it might be different.”