Nell's friendly speeches were sometimes hard to bear, as well as Phyllis's unfriendly ones. Hetty would have been glad if the whole affair could have been laid before Mrs. Enderby, and saw no reason to congratulate herself on Phyllis's silence to her mother as to the quarrel and its cause. But the others judged differently. Miss Davis was pleased that by her own tact she had been able to arrange matters without calling in the aid of Mrs. Enderby, who, she was aware, liked a governess to have judgment and decision sufficient to keep the mistress of the house out of school-room squabbles. Nell was delighted that there was to be no more "fuss." Phyllis above all was pleased, for now she felt no more necessity for questioning her own motives and conduct, no more danger of being told by her mother that Hetty had in the beginning been in the right, while she, by opposing her, had brought on the wrong which had followed.
Falling back upon her own doctrine, that she must be right because her judgment told her so, Phyllis was coldly amiable to Hetty for the rest of the evening; while Hetty, having made her act of humility, rather suffered from a reaction of feeling, and had to struggle hard to keep the moral vantage-ground she had gained.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
A TRIAL OF PATIENCE.
Two more years passed over Hetty's head. She had grown tall and looked old for her age, her large gray eyes were full of serious thought, her brow was grave, and the expression of her mouth touched with sadness. The haughtiness and mirth of her childhood were alike gone. Earnest desire to attain to a difficult end was the one force that moved her, and this had become visible in her every word and glance. She was painfully aware that the time was approaching when she must go forth to battle with the world for herself, and that on her own qualifications for fighting that battle her position in the world must depend. That she had not sufficient aptitude for learning out of books, or for remembering readily all that she gathered from them, she greatly feared. Her memory gave her back in pictures whatever had engaged her imagination; but much that was useful and necessary was wont to pass away out of her grasp. Thorough determination, close application, did not remove this difficulty, and she was warned by those around her that unless she could make better use for study of the three years yet before her than she had made of those that lay behind her, she could never be a teacher of a very high order. Of all that this failure meant, Hetty understood more clearly now than when she had wished to live with Mrs. Kane and be the village schoolmistress. Loving all that was beautiful and refined in life, she had learned to dread, from another motive than pride, the fate of being thrown upon a lower social level. And yet this was a fate which seemed now to stare her in the face.
Mr. Enderby, who had of late taken a personal interest in her studies, examining her from time to time on various subjects, said to her:
"My little girl, if you do not wake up and work harder I fear you will have to take an inferior position in life to that which I desired for you."
Poor Hetty! Was she not wide awake? So wide awake that when he and all the household were asleep she lay staring her misfortune in the face. And how could she work harder than she did, weeping in secret over the dry facts that would not leave their mark upon her brain? Thus it was that life looked dreary to her, and her face was grave and pale. Phyllis and Nell, who were three and two years older than herself, had begun to talk of the joys which the magic age of eighteen had in store for them. They would leave off study and go forth into the enjoyment of their youth in a flattering world. Idleness, pleasure, happiness awaited them. No one could say they were not sufficiently well educated to take that graceful place in life which Providence had assigned to them; Hetty was rebuked for being less learned than she ought to be, because for her there was no graceful place prepared; only a difficult and narrow path leading away she knew not where.