"And I will do my best," said Mrs. Dorriman, gently.
"You should know about things. I do not know how it was done, but there was some comfort in the old place, and I suppose you had something to do with that."
"Of course I did see about things. I do not know if they were very comfortable."
"They were," he said, emphatically, "and you will find they want stirring up in this house. The morning I was taken ill there was not one soul out of bed. I rang and rang and only a wretched girl answered. You must alter all that. I expect you to keep everyone and everything in order, and in good order too; and," he added—looking round, not at the girls but well above their heads—"if any one gives trouble, they go!"
Mrs. Dorriman felt her heart sink. The old manner, the old hard-handed way of laying down the law, brought to her mind times when in almost these very words she had read changes distasteful and unfortunate for her; something of that helpless feeling of her childhood came to her, when she had been left to struggle on without care or affection, when her nurse had been banished, and she had to put on her clothes, and perform for herself all that, till then, had been done by kindly hands. For, though we live to forgive many wrongs, and time mercifully softens our regrets, and blunts the edge of our sensibilities, there are two things we may learn to forgive, but we never learn to forget—a wrong done to us in childhood, when we were too helpless and too young to protect ourselves, and a wound to our self-love in later life.
There was a prolonged silence, which became at length a noticeable one. Then Grace, feeling that it lay with her to show how little the purport of Mr. Sandford's words affected her, said in a light tone,
"Do you ever see people here, Mr. Sandford?"
"See people!" he echoed; "you can see plenty of people whenever you look out of the window. See people! why it would be a pleasanter place if there were not so many to see."
"Of course I do not mean in that sense," said Grace, with dignity; "I mean, do people call here?"
"I have no doubt plenty of people will call now," he said, with mock solemnity, which for the moment took her in, as he gave an old-fashioned bow in her direction.