"Lady Minshull will engage you, Lois, if you think such a place as you would occupy at Westwood Park would meet your views. I have no fear as to your qualifications. Her children are young and accustomed to obey, which is a great advantage, especially to a beginner at tuition. But while you will have all outward comforts, the social atmosphere of Westwood is a cold one. You will be the governess, and as such, Lady Minshull will look down upon you with an air of conscious superiority. She will talk to you about her children in a thoroughly common sense way; but your intercourse will be a purely business one, and if you were to spend half your life under that roof, you and Lady Minshull would never come any nearer. Friendship or affection between her and a governess, however gifted and well-born, would never cross her mind as a possibility."
"Mind, you would have absolutely nothing to complain of; so far as externals go. But you would never call Westwood 'home,' and there would be some danger of your carrying a mummified heart in a living human body, for want of being allowed to love those among whom you found yourself. I do not know whether my being in the neighbourhood would be any compensation, but as my husband is Lord Minshull's lawyer, he goes to the Park very often, and I occasionally, so that we should meet sometimes."
"The other situation open to you is in a Yorkshire vicarage. There is a large family, eight altogether the two eldest boys are away at school, and two tiny girls are not old enough to need teaching; but your actual pupils would be five."
"You will smile at the arithmetic which adds two, two, and four, and makes the total nine, but the fifth is a girl of fourteen, the only child of a wealthy man in the immediate neighbourhood. She is taught with the vicar's children, and lives at the vicarage, within reach of her parents, who cannot wholly part with her, but who feel the advantage of companionship for their one darling."
"You will be surprised to find that the salaries offered by the titled lady and the poor parson are identical, namely, forty pounds a year and laundress's expenses. The vicar could not afford so much but for the liberal terms he receives with Mary Baxendell, but he is a conscientious man, and gives the governess her full share of this payment."
"He and his wife are well-born and highly intellectual people, of whose Christian practice I know enough to make me honour them with all my heart. They are really poor in this world's goods. Their surroundings are of the simplest, though not without refinement. Food, clothing, furniture—all, in short, at Hillstowe Vicarage, must needs be of the plainest. But it is the home of warm hearts and cultured minds, though a very long way from Askerton and Birch Hill, as well as from every one you have known. Choose for yourself, dear Lois, and may God direct you!"
I need quote no more. As I read the last lines of description, I caught myself saying, "Give me the home, however poor, so long as warm hearts shelter there, and the farther it is from my old one the better."
Then I read the prayer of my old friend, "May God direct you!" and, rebuked by conscience, I fell on my knees and asked for the guidance I so much needed. When I rose, after no stinted time, I found that conscience confirmed my first choice, with this one reservation; it suggested doubts as to the fitness of a girl of nineteen to teach those who were so few years younger than herself.
However, I wrote to the Rev. David Barr, at Hillstowe Vicarage, with all possible frankness, told him my age, position, and capabilities, as honestly and fully as I could in a letter, and awaited the result. He did not keep me in needless suspense, but met me with equal frankness, and owned that he had some doubts about engaging one so young.
"If I could see you," he added, "the difficulty which presents itself to my mind might vanish. But we are about two hundred miles apart, and an interview seems hardly possible, as I can neither afford the cost of such a journey nor offer to pay your expenses. I shall have to go about half-way in your direction three days hence; if you could afford to come the other half on the chance of an engagement, let me know."
I turned out the contents of my purse, already reduced by one-third, and resolved to risk journey. I could go by the cheapest train, which started early in the morning, but on returning, I must travel second class.
The bare railway fares would take more than one of my four remaining pounds. But I had an inward hankering after that Yorkshire home, and if I failed to obtain an entrance, there was Westwood Park to fall back upon, where the children were young; and Lady Minshull being absent, I need not send an answer for a week to come.
Hannah Brown packed a little basket for me, so that I should not need to buy anything at the refreshment rooms. A bottle of new milk, some home-made cake, a little packet of sandwiches—enough for me, and good enough for any one. The kind woman went with me to the station, on that frosty morning in early January, the crisp snow crunching beneath our feet and the stars glittering overhead, for it was hours before dawn. We had good two miles to walk, and the train started at six o'clock. On the road we met furniture vans, empty, but going to be filled with the contents of my old home, that they might be conveyed to the auctioneer's rooms and scattered at the fall of his hammer.
Such a meeting was not likely to raise my spirits, but I made no remark, though my eyes filled.
I was glad there was no stronger light for Hannah to discern my trickling tears. But I think her love made her conscious of them, for she whispered—