“Gussy, how unkind, when you know I can’t!”
“That is all a delusion, Miss Summerhayes: but we need not discuss it. She has to be wheeled about in her chair, and nothing but a visit from the Queen will make her get out of it. Now we’ve disposed of mamma, I won’t say anything about myself, for you are forming your opinion of me all the while, as I talk. I don’t think I am very hard to get on with; but we must tell you, and that is the chief point of all, that the most difficult of the family is Ju.”
“And Ju is——?” said Janet.
“Of course your pupil. She is fourteen, and she is as obstinate as a pig. We can do nothing with her, mamma and I—it is not that there is any harm in her. Perhaps if we did not think so much about it things would go better; but we think, and we consult, and we compare notes, and end by worrying ourselves very much—at least mamma worries herself. We hope that some one quite new, whom she is not accustomed to, who is a novelty to her, and whom she must be civil to, will produce quite a different effect.”
Janet felt a little thrill run over her at this description.
“I hope you know,” she said, somewhat faintly; “I hope Mr. Bland told you—that I have really no experience at all.”
“We think that is all the better,” said Gussy. “She is up to all the ways of the experienced people. We don’t like to say anything against governesses, but they run very much in grooves, like most other people, for that matter. Now you are not professional at all; you have not got into any of their dodges. Oh, don’t say anything, mamma; I must use the handiest word. You are just a girl, like any of us: I don’t see how she can be nasty with you—at least not at first,” said Gussy, reflectively, “and by the time she is familiar enough to begin her tricks we hope you will have got an ascendancy.”
Miss Harwood stopped for a moment and listened.
“Hush! don’t look as if we had been talking in particular; she is coming.”
Janet did not know what to expect. She listened, thinking of the whoop and crash of some young savage; but there was nothing of the kind, and she gave a little start in the most spontaneous manner, and rose up quickly, when Gussy said, in her soft voice: