I nodded with a smile. I was burning to tell her everything. Already I felt that I loved her dearly—her voice was as sweet as her face. Yet there were tones in the former and lines in the latter telling of much sorrow and suffering, young as she was. I was far too much of a child to understand this. I only felt vaguely that there was something about her which reminded me of mamma as she had looked these last few weeks.
And my heart was won.
[CHAPTER VII.]
GATHERING CLOUDS.
After that first day at Green Bank, the remembrance of things in detail is not so clear to me.
To begin with, the life was very monotonous. Except for the different lessons, one day passed much like another, the principal variety being the coming of Sunday and the two weekly half-holidays—Wednesday and Saturday. But to me the half-holidays brought no pleasure. I think I disliked them more than lesson days, and most certainly I disliked Sundays most of all.
Looking back now, I think my whole nature and character must have gone through some curious changes in these first weeks at school. I grew older very rapidly.
There first came by degrees the great disappointment of it all—for though I am anxious not to exaggerate anything, it was a bewildering "disillusionment" to me. Nobody and nothing were what I had imagined they would be. Straight out of my sheltered home, where every thought and tone and word were full of love, I was tossed into this world of school, where, though no doubt there were kind hearts and nice natures as there are everywhere, the whole feeling was different. Even the good-nature was rough and unrefined—the tones of voice, the ways of moving about, the readiness to squabble, though very likely it was more a kind of bluster than anything worse, all startled and astounded me, as I gradually awoke from my dream of the delights of being at school surrounded by companions.