But the Rivers girls had that boundless spring of hope that is the delightful portion of youth and health combined; and in the invitation conveyed to them through the banker they only saw fresh kindness.
They had been all these years at a very second-rate English school; they had no visitors, nothing, not even holidays, to break the monotony of school life, and the prospect of going anywhere was exciting.
They had the misfortune there of being just a little above their companions in position, their father being a man of good family and their mother well connected; they had also a little independence of their own, a hundred and twenty pounds a year, and they were the wards of Mr. Sandford, whose wealth was immensely exaggerated, as fortune often is when at all undefined.
The two sisters who kept the school were kindly-intentioned, weak, and very ignorant women, whose educational deficiencies did not they thought signify, because they supervised only, and taught nothing themselves—the fact being that they were not capable of distinguishing real teaching from something of a very superficial kind.
The girls went there at six and eight years old; they were nice-looking girls, with no real beauty, but good-looking enough for partial friends to admire, and enemies to dispraise their personal appearance. The old ladies were fond of them, flattered and spoiled them, and their companions followed suit. Never did two girls go out into the wide world less fitted to take up a position in it properly. Grace had a rooted conviction that in some way she was a little better than every one else, and must always lead everywhere; and Margaret, herself very gentle, timid, and of a clinging nature, saw everything from Grace's standpoint, measured everything by Grace's standard, conceived her to be the most beautiful, cleverest, and most wonderful creature ever made, and thought it quite natural that she should expect always to be first everywhere. Everything she did she conceived to be almost inspired, she admired her, looked up to her, and had not a thought or feeling of her own, apart from her.
The girls left school, escorted as far as Edinburgh by a teacher going there. They were very much surprised no one met them there, but they went on to Glasgow, confident that here some one would come for them.
Never, as far as they could remember, had they left school since first going there, and even Grace, who was independent and capable, she thought, of going anywhere by herself, was depressed when they arrived in Glasgow.
It was a drizzling, dark autumnal day, the heavy pall of smoke that makes that prosperous place look so dismal and dingy to all outsiders, lay over everything. They could not see a hundred yards on either side of them, and when they got out of the carriage they were bewildered and dejected.
Every one seemed too busy to attend to them, and Grace thought it most extraordinary, and Margaret still more extraordinary, that no one paid her any attention. Surely they could all see who she was?
It was with difficulty that they got some information, and found that they had to go to a different station, and in haste, too, if they wished to catch the only train that went to Renton that night.