‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said Mab again, crimson with shame; ‘it was so silly of me not to think: but as it is so early——’
‘I must take my food when the children do so,’ said the schoolmistress; ‘pray sit down. I am not much of a sight when I feed, but still——’
‘I hope you don’t think I came on purpose to disturb you at your—lunch,’ said Mab. To the schoolmistress of the old régime she would have said dinner. ‘I came—to ask you if you wouldn’t say something—I mean recite something, or act something, at the entertainment to-night. We all think you would do it much better than any one here.’
‘Do what? How kind of you—almost as if I were on an equality: though, perhaps it is because of some one having failed that the schoolmistress may come in? Who has failed, Miss Pakenham, at the eleventh hour? I see, of course, that in these circumstances to apply to a dependent was the only way.’
‘Mrs. Brown,’ said Mab, ‘I have always thought you were a lady; but if you are so ready to think that we are not ladies, I shan’t think so any more.’
‘Well said!’ said the schoolmistress, laying down her fork. ‘Will you have a little of my ragout? I have taught my little maid to make it, and I think it’s very successful. I am fond of good cooking—that is one of the remnants, though, perhaps, at your age you will not think it a very romantic one—of my better days.’
‘I should have thought,’ said Mab, ‘if you were like most of the people who have seen better days, that you would not have cared what you eat.’
‘Ah, yes!’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘that is very true: but I am not like most of those people. I am not so sure that I regret my better days—or that if I liked I might not have them back.’
‘Then in the name of wonder,’ said Mab, ‘why do you stay here?—don’t they often drive you half-mad, those little things that never will learn to spell, and that can’t remember anything if you were to say it to them twenty times in an hour? I would not be a schoolmistress a moment longer than I could help it, if it were me.’
‘Then let us hope it will never be you,’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘The little girls are not alone in driving one half-mad, as you say. There are hundreds of things in the world that would drive you much madder if you knew them as I do.’