“Now, I want to talk to you very seriously, Miss Derwent,” said Blanche’s “girl with the happy face.”
“Mrs Harrowby and I are counting on your doing great things to help us. You see it is such a disadvantage in any little work of this kind for those who principally manage it to be so much away. And if you could take interest in it, it would be such a good thing for the girls. For I suppose”—and she glanced up with a touch of apology—“I suppose you will not be going to London for the season this year, as you have come here so lately?”
“No,” said Blanche simply, “we shall certainly stay here. I doubt if we shall ever go to London except for a day or two’s shopping: we have no friends there.”
“It will be different, of course, when you have been longer in England,” said Hebe. “And,” she added with a smile, “when your sister comes out, I scarcely think she would be satisfied with nothing more amusing than Pinnerton, however content you are.”
Blanche coloured a little.
“You think me better than I am,” she said. “I should enjoy—things—too, but if one can’t have them? But I think I should mind for Stasy more than for myself. She is naturally more dependent on outside life than I. She does feel it very dull and lonely here, and I wish she had some companions.” Hebe looked and felt full of sympathy.
“I hope your life here will brighten by degrees,” she said. “Don’t you think your sister would do something to help us, too? She seems so clever.”
“Yes, she is very quick, and she can be very amusing,” said Blanche. “We should both be glad to do anything we can. But have you not a good many helpers already? And those other ladies—the residents here—they don’t go away. Could not they take charge in your absence much better than a stranger like me?”
She glanced across the room to where Miss Adela Bracy, a small, capable-looking, dark girl, was at the moment saying something in a low voice to the rosebud-faced Florry Wandle. Lady Hebe’s eyes followed hers.
“They are very good, so far as they go,” she replied, “but they are not quite capable of taking the lead. And they have really as much to do as they can manage. It is some one to replace myself when I am away that I want to find. And I could explain it all to you so well, and get advice from you too, I have no doubt.”