“I am really glad not to have made new friends till now,” said Mrs Derwent. “It does look so different here, though we have been very comfortable at Miss Halliday’s, and she has been most good to us.”
“Yes,” Blanche agreed; “and I think we should make up our minds to be happy here, whether we know many nice people or not, mamma. The only thing I really care about is a little good companionship for Stasy.”
“She must not make friends with any girls beneath her—as to that I am determined,” said Mrs Derwent.
“Far better have none. Not that anything could make her common, but it would be bad for her to feel herself the superior; and I can picture her queening it over others, and then making fun of them and their homes and ways. She has such a sense of the ridiculous. No; Stasy needs to be with those she can look up to. I am sure, Blanche, it is better not to think of her going to that day-school at Blissmore.”
For Stasy was only sixteen, and the question of her studies was still a question. At Blissmore, under the shadow of the now important public school for boys, various minor institutions for girls were springing up, all, as might have been expected, of a rather mixed class, though the teaching in most was good.
And Stasy, for her part, would have thought it “great fun” to go to school for a year or so.
The matter was compromised by arrangements being made for her having private lessons at home on certain days of the week, and joining one or two classes at the best girls’ school at Blissmore on others, to which she could be escorted by Aline when she took little Herty to his day-school.