White Turrets

by Mrs. Molesworth

The enclosure was a slightly stiff and yet cordial invitation—an invitation which gave one the feeling that the writer had not the slightest doubt of its being at once and eagerly accepted—to Miss Norreys, to spend Easter week at White Turrets.

“You would give us pleasure by doing so,” wrote Mrs Maryon, “and we should be glad to have an opportunity of thanking you for your kindness to my daughter, and of making the acquaintance of one to whom in her present life she looks for advice and direction. And there are several things I should be glad to talk over with you. We expect Winifred at the time I name, and you and she could travel together. I think there are special return tickets issued about Easter, and I hope a little country air would do you good.”

Hertha read and re-read. Was there, or was there not, a slight touch of “patronisingness” in the letter? The idea rather amused her.

“It is almost impossible,” she said to herself. ”‘Poor and proud’ explains it, I suppose. Winifred was delighted to get the fifty pounds salary. I wish they had not asked me, for any visitor causes expense when people are so poor, and unaccustomed to that sort of thing. No doubt they think me very poor too—poorer than I am now, I am glad to say; the railway fare information is evidently given with that idea.”

Then she poured out a second cup of coffee, and proceeded with her cogitations.

“I have several invitations for Easter, but with out being cynical or suspicious I know that some, at least, of them are more for my voice than me. And my voice had much better stay at home or go to sleep. And it would be a rest of its kind to be with a simple country family like that—no dressing to speak of—I need not take a maid. It must be a pretty quaint place, too, I fancy. I wonder if ‘White Turrets’ is the name of a village, or what? It doesn’t seem likely that their house would have so important a name, though there are old farmhouses in some countries, scarcely more than cottages, with very grand names. I remember,”—she glanced at the letter again. “It must be their house or the village, for I see the railway station and post-town are both different. Dear me—the Maryons are rather extravagant as to note-paper! If one didn’t know it was impossible, this might have come from some big place!”

Then her thoughts reverted to her own plans.

“I should like to see that pretty younger sister again,” she thought. “And, after all, it will not increase any real or imaginary responsibility about Winifred if I come to a clear understanding with her mother. Not that I would shirk responsibility if it were a duty, but in this case it would be a mockery. She is not a girl to be either led or advised, and the reason that I am still her dearest friend is that I have—except on that one occasion—left her to buy her own experience. She needs to do so.”

The “one occasion” to which Hertha’s thoughts referred had been that of a crisis in Winifred’s relations with the society for which she worked—a crisis which, at the cost of considerable mortification, had left her a wiser woman. For it was only the finish up of a series of annoyances which had begun almost from the first day of her engagement, the cause of which may be summed up very shortly—Miss Maryon’s absolute ignorance of the meaning of the word obedience.

She was quite sure she knew the best way to manage the work better than those who had been at it for years; she was brimful of eagerness to distinguish herself, and of a kind of enthusiasm; she was energetic and hard-working, but she was entirely without deference. And underlying all her talk about the dignity of labour, the contemptibleness of an ordinary woman’s home-life, was a strong, though, unexpressed belief that she was doing the society no small honour in working for it, and that, by some instinct which she did not seek to define, the society should be aware of the fact.