“Fanny is an awkward, clumsy creature, I’ll allow,” she said, with an air of great magnanimity, “so you may move them, or make her do it. But if she breaks one single thing I’ll complain to Mamma; I will indeed,” with a very lordly air, as she got up from the floor and prepared to follow Leila downstairs.
Nurse had the self-control to say nothing till the young lady was out of hearing, but as she and Fanny began together to clear the confused heap out of danger’s way, she could not resist saying to the girl, “To hear the child speak you’d think she never broke or spoilt a thing in her life! She’s worse than Miss Leila, and she’s bad enough, always half in a dream over her books. But Miss Chrissie’s worse. The losings and breakings!”
“Yes,” Fanny agreed, “and the messing with paint and gum and ink. Those new blouses. Nurse, are just covered with spots, and between them I don’t think they’ve a brooch with a pin to it.”
Nurse sighed, and the sigh was not a selfish one.
Downstairs, in the meantime, Miss Earle had, unwillingly enough, judged it wisest to make the best of things and to waste no more time, by beginning Jasper’s lessons in accordance with the message from Christabel, which the little fellow delivered much more politely than he had received it.
But the governess was far from satisfied.
She was young, excellently qualified for her post, and really interested in the children, as they were far from wanting in intelligence and love of knowledge, and now and then the lessons went swimmingly; brightly enough even to satisfy her own enthusiasm. But at other and more frequent times there was, alas, a very different story to tell, a sadly disappointing report to make, and Miss Earle almost began to despair. She had not been with the Fortescues very long, and she was intensely anxious to give satisfaction to their kind mother, who had behaved to her with the greatest consideration and liberality, and it grieved her to feel that, unless she could gain more influence over the girls, she must resign her charge of them.
“They are completely ‘out of hand,’ as it were,” she found herself one day obliged to say to Mrs Fortescue. “They don’t seem to know what ‘must’ means; in fact, in their different ways, their only idea is to do what they like and not what they don’t, and yet they are so clever and honest and they can be such darlings,” and she looked up almost with tears in her eyes. “It is discipline they need,” she added, “and—” hesitating a little, “unselfishness—thought for others.”
She need not have hesitated. Mrs Fortescue knew it was all true.
“I suppose the simple explanation is that I—we—have spoilt them,” she said sadly. “And now it is beginning to show. But Jasper, Miss Earle, the youngest—he should be the most spoilt.”