[CHAPTER V.]
AN UNPROMISING BEGINNING.
My first sight of Miss Ledbury was a sort of agreeable disappointment. She was not the least like what I had imagined, though till I did see her I do not think I knew that I had imagined anything! She had been much less in my thoughts than her pupils; it was the idea of companions, the charm of being one of a party of other girls, with a place of my own among them, that my fancy had been full of. I don't think I cared very much what the teachers were like.
What I did see was a very small, fragile-looking old lady, with quite white hair, a black or purple—I am not sure which, anyway it was dark—silk dress, and a soft fawn-coloured cashmere shawl. She had a white lace cap, tied with ribbons under her chin, and black lace mittens. Looking back now, I cannot picture her in any other dress. I cannot remember ever seeing her with a bonnet on, and yet she must have worn one, as she went to church regularly. Her face was small and still pretty, and the eyes were naturally sweet, sometimes they had a twinkle of humour in them, sometimes they looked almost hard. The truth was that she was a gentle, kind-hearted person by nature, but a narrow life and education had stunted her power of sympathy, and she thought it wrong to give way to feeling. She was conscious of what she believed to be weakness in herself, and was always trying to be firm and determined. And since her niece had come to live with her, this put-on sternness had increased.
Yet I was never really afraid of Miss Ledbury, though I never—well, perhaps that is rather too strong—almost never, I should say, felt at ease with her.
I was, I suppose, a very shy child, but till now the circumstances of my life had not brought this out.
This first time of seeing my future school-mistress I liked her very much. There was indeed something very attractive about her—something almost "fairy-godmother-like" which took my fancy.
We did not stay long. Miss Ledbury was not without tact, and she saw that the mention of the approaching parting, the settling the day and hour at which I was to come to Green Bank to stay, were very, very trying to mamma. And I almost think her misunderstanding of me began from that first interview. In her heart I fancy she was shocked at my coolness, for she did not know, or if she ever had known, she had forgotten, much about children—their queer contradictory ways of taking things, how completely they are sometimes the victims of their imagination, how little they realise anything they have had no experience of.
All that the old lady did not understand in me, she put down to my being spoilt and selfish. She even, I believe, thought me forward.
Still, she spoke kindly—said she hoped I should soon feel at home at Green Bank, and try to get on well with my lessons, so that when my dear mamma returned she would be astonished at the progress I had made.