“It is so different when you are standing up before a crowd of people, and it all seems to float away from you; so different from singing at home.”
“Then you have done it yourself?” said Gussy, surprised.
“Oh, only at our little concerts at Clover, where I knew everybody: and I only played, which is not nearly so bad; but I have seen people who, for a minute, forgot everything, and looked as if they would run away.”
“I don’t think I shall want to run away,” said Miss Harwood, with dignity.
“Oh, no, I didn’t suppose so; but you will feel so much more comfortable if you know your song well. Shall we go over it once again?”
“It is very kind of Miss Summerhayes,” said Mrs. Harwood, feeling a want of warmth in her daughter’s reception of this generous offer. “It is very nice of her,” the old lady added, “for it can’t matter a bit to her. It is not as if she were teaching you, when she might get some credit from it. It is entirely good feeling.”
“I am sure I am—much obliged to Miss Summerhayes,” said Gussy. And she was aware that what her mother said was quite true. She was not an impulsive person in general, but a sudden movement of remorse for her own ingratitude and appreciation of the other’s unselfishness seized her all at once. “I don’t see,” she said, “why we should go on calling her Miss Summerhayes when she has been three months in the house, and always so nice. I am sure she would prefer it, mamma, if you at least were to call her Janet; and it is a pretty name, too; not like our solemnities in the Harwood family.”
Janet was taken very much by surprise. She was not quite sure that she was so much gratified as she expected to be, and it took her a certain effort to get up the little burst of pleasure and gratitude which was becoming. It is a sad thing to be expected to be grateful for a favor which does not appear to yourself in that light. Janet had always been called Janet by everybody all her life, so that she rather preferred at present to be Miss Summerhayes. However, she succeeded in assuming the air of delighted surprise which was necessary in the circumstances, and when Mrs. Harwood kissed her, and said, with her motherly smile, “I shall like so much to call you Janet, my dear,” the genuine kindness touched her heart.
“I hope I shall never do anything to vex this dear old lady,” she said to herself.
The silent prayer was not realized, but still it may be put on record as a real moment of feeling in Janet’s very contradictory little being. She was very uncertain what Gussy could mean in thus opening to her the gates of intimacy, and receiving her, as it were, on a new footing. What did she mean by it? But Miss Harwood herself could not have told. She meant a momentary compunction, a half-apology, and to compensate the girl a little for the involuntary doubt she had of her. If there was anything more in it, Gussy herself was unconscious of further motive. It was something in the nature of a penance, no doubt; for Miss Harwood loved the governess a trifle less as Janet, in the intimacy of the closest intercourse, than she had done as a stranger and Miss Summerhayes.