“But we won’t go—we can’t go,” cried Mab. “I shall die, and Cicely will die, if we are sent away from home.”
“My dears!” said poor Mr. St. John—this impetuosity was terrible to him—“you must not say so; indeed you must not say so. What could I say to your aunt? She means to give you all she has, and how could I oppose her? She means it for the best. I am sure she means it for the best.”
“And did you really consent,” said Cicely, seriously, looking him straight in the eyes, “without ever saying a word to us, or to Miss Brown? Oh, papa, I could not have believed it of you! I hate Aunt Jane! Miss Brown, dear!” cried the girl, throwing her arms suddenly round the little governess, “it is not Mab’s fault nor mine!”
Then it was Miss Brown’s turn to fall upon the unhappy curate and slay him. “My dear love,” she said, “how could I suppose it was your fault or Mab’s? Except a little levity now and then, which was to be expected at your age, you have been very good, very good children. There is no fault at all in the matter,” she continued, turning with that magnanimity of the aggrieved which is so terrible to an offender, to Mr. St. John. “Perhaps it is a little sudden; perhaps a person so fond of the girls as I am might have been expected to be consulted as to the best school; for there is a great difference in schools. But Miss Maydew is very impetuous, and I don’t blame your dear papa. When do you wish me to leave, sir?” she said, looking at him with a smile, which tortured the curate, upon her lips.
“Miss Brown, I hope you will not think badly of me,” he said. “You can’t think how hard all this is upon me.”
The little woman rose up, and waved her hand with dignity. “We must not enter into such questions,” she said; “if you will be so very kind as to tell me when you would like me to go.”
I don’t know what incoherent words the curate stammered forth: that she should stay as long as she liked; that she must make her arrangements entirely to suit herself; that he had never thought of wishing her to go. This was what he said in much disturbance and agitation of mind instead of the other formula he had rehearsed about having no further need for her services. All this Miss Brown received with the pale smiling of the injured and magnanimous; while the girls looked fiercely on their father, leaving him alone and undefended. When he got away he was so exhausted that he did not feel able to go out into the parish, but withdrew to his study, where he lurked, half paralyzed, all the rest of the day, like the criminal abandoned by woman and by man, which he felt himself to be.
And I will not attempt to describe the commotion which this announcement raised in the rest of the house. Miss Brown kept up that smile of magnanimous meekness all day. She would not give in. “No, my dears,” she said, “there is nothing to be said except that it is a little sudden. I think your papa is quite right, and that you are getting beyond me.”
“It is not papa,” said Cicely; “it is that horrible Aunt Jane.”
“And she was quite right,” said the magnanimous governess; “quite right. She saw that I was not strong enough. It is a little sudden, that is all; and we must not make mountains out of mole-hills, my dears.” But she, too, retired to her room early, where, sitting forlorn at the window, she had a good cry, poor soul; for she had begun to grow fond of this rude solitude, and she had no home.