"Well, I've done all I could, Mary," said she to the under housemaid, as she went below, "and all to no purpose; there's no persuading Miss Neville, more's the pity; she thinks she's right about Miss Alice, and she'll stick to it. I wish I'd asked her not to go near Madam to-day. I'm positive sure she was going when I surprised her after passing Mrs. Linchmore in the passage. She came from the school-room too, I know, and vexed enough she was, or she'd never have had that hard look on her face. Well, I only hope the Master will be by when they do meet again, or there'll be mischief, mark me if there isn't."
"Law! Mrs. Hopkins, how you talk. I wouldn't wait for the master neither, if I were Miss Neville. I'd speak at once and have done with it, that's my plan; see if I would let Miss Alice come over me with her tantrums, if I was a lady!"
"She speaks every bit like that lady you were reading about in the book last night; she'd make you believe anything and love her too. Well, I hope no harm will come of it, but I don't like that look on Madam's face, nor on Miss Neville's, neither, for the matter of that."
But nurse was wrong. Perhaps Amy changed her mind, and never spoke to Mrs. Linchmore. At all events, things went on as they did before Charles Linchmore came—whose visit, by the way, was not quite such a flying one—and continued the same long after he had gone away.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BOOK SHELVES
"O my swete mother, before all other
For you I have most drede:
But now adue! I must ensue,
Where fortune doth me lede.
All this make ye: now let us flee:
The day cometh fast upon;
For in my minde, of all mankynde
I love but you alone."
The Nut Brown Maid.