Mrs Fanshawe said, “Oh, really! How very interesting!” and looked about as uninterested the while as a human creature could be. In the pause which followed it was obvious that she was readjusting the first impression of a young gentlewoman belonging to her own leisured class, and preparing herself to cross-question an entirely different person—an ordinary teacher in a High School! There was a touch of patronage in her manner, but it was still quite agreeable Mrs Fanshawe was always agreeable for choice: she found it the best policy, and her indolent nature shrank from disagreeables of every kind. This pretty girl had made herself quite useful, and a chat with her would enliven a dull hour in the train. Curiosity shifted its point, but remained actively in force.
“Tell me all about it!” she said suavely. “I know nothing about teachers. Shocking, isn’t it? They alarm me too much. I have a horror of clever women. You don’t look at all clever. I mean that as a compliment—far too pretty and smart, but I suppose you are dreadfully learned, all the same. What are you going to teach?”
“French. I am almost as good as a Frenchwoman, for I’ve talked little else for sixteen years. Mother and I spoke English together, or I should have forgotten my own language. It seems, from a scholastic point of view, that it’s a useful blend to possess—perfect French and an English temperament. ‘Mademoiselle’ is not always a model of patience!”
“And you think you will be? I prophesy differently. You’ll throw the whole thing up in six months, and fly off to mamma in India. You haven’t the least idea what you are in for, but you’ll find out, you’ll find out! Where is this precious school? In town, did you say? Shall you live in the house or with friends?”
“I have no friends in London except Miss Farnborough, the head mistress, but there are fifteen other mistresses besides myself. That will be fifteen friends ready-made. I am going to share lodgings with one of them, and be a bachelor girl on my own account. I’m so excited about it. After living in countries where a girl can’t go to the pillar-box alone, it will be thrilling to be free to do just as I like. Please don’t pity me! I’m going to have great fun.”
Mrs Fanshawe hitched herself still further into her corner and smiled a lazy, quizzical smile.
“Oh, I don’t pity you—not one bit! All young people nowadays think they are so much wiser than their parents; it’s a wholesome lesson to learn their mistake. You’re a silly, blind, ridiculous little girl, and if I’d been your mother, I should have insisted upon taking you with me, whether you liked it or not. I always wanted a daughter like you—sons are so dull; but perhaps it’s just as well that she never appeared. She might have wanted to be independent, too, in which case we should have quarrelled.—So those fifteen school-mistresses make up your whole social circle, do they? I wouldn’t mind prophesying that you’ll never want to speak a word to them out of school hours! I have a friend living in town, quite a nice woman, with a daughter about your age. Shall I ask her to send you a card? It would be somewhere for you to go on free afternoons, and she entertains a good deal, and has a craze for the feminist movement, and for girls who work for themselves. You might come in for some fun.”
Claire’s flush of gratification made her look prettier than ever, and Mrs Fanshawe felt an agreeable glow of self-satisfaction. Nothing she liked better than to play the part of Lady Bountiful, especially when any effort involved was shifted onto the shoulders of another, and in her careless fashion she was really anxious to do this nice girl a good turn. She made a note of Claire’s address in a dainty gold-edged pocket-book, expressed pleasure in the belief that through her friend she would hear reports of the girl’s progress, and presently shut her eyes, and dozed peacefully for the rest of the ride.
Round London a fine rain was falling, and the terminus looked bleak and cheerless as the train slowed down the long platform. Mason, still haggard, roused herself to step to the platform and look around as if expecting to see a familiar face, and in the midst of collecting her own impedimenta Claire was conscious that Mrs Fanshawe was distinctly ruffled, when the familiar figure failed to appear. Once more she found herself coming to the rescue, marshalling the combined baggage to the screened portion of the platform where the custom-house officials went through the formalities incidental to the occasion, while the tired passengers stood shiveringly on guard, looking bleached and grey after their night’s journey. The bright-haired, bright-faced girl stood out in pleasant contrast to the rest, trim and smart and dainty as though such a thing as fatigue did not exist. Mrs Fanshawe, looking at her, stopped short in the middle of a mental grumble, and turned it round, so that it ended in being a thanksgiving instead.
“Most neglectful of Erskine to fail me after promising he would come... Perhaps, after all, it’s just as well he did not.”