Mamma had provided me with both plain work and a little simple fancy work, but as my things were not yet unpacked, I had neither with me, and I sat feeling awkward and ashamed, seeing all the others busily preparing for business.
"Have you no work, my dear?" said Miss Fenmore gently. It was the first kind speech I had had from a governess.
"It isn't unpacked," I said, feeling my cheeks grow red, I did not know why.
Miss Fenmore hesitated for a moment. Then she took out a stocking—or rather the beginning of one on knitting-needles.
"Can you knit?" she asked.
"I can knit plain—plain and purl—just straight on," I said. "But I've never done it round like that."
"Never mind, you will learn easily, as you know how to knit. Come and sit beside me, so that I can watch you."
She made the girls sit a little more closely, making a place for me beside her, and I would have been quite happy had I not seen a cross expression on several faces, and heard murmurs of "favouring," "spoilt pet," and so on.
Miss Fenmore, if she heard, took no notice. And in a few moments all was in order. We read aloud in turns—the book was supposed to be a story-book, but it seemed to me very dull, though the fault may have lain in the uninteresting way the girls read, and the constant change of voices, as no one read more than two pages at a time. I left off trying to listen and gave my whole attention to my knitting, encouraged by Miss Fenmore's whispered "very nice—a little looser," or "won't it be nice to knit socks for your father or brother, if you have a brother?"