It had been previously settled that I was to spend Christmas with the Baxendells. I had half hoped that they might engage me as governess to Mary, but I found that Mr. Baxendell shrank from the idea of having a governess in the house. He seemed to think it would spoil its privacy, and prove a restraint to him and his wife.
Mrs. Baxendell would have liked to engage me. Mary pleaded for this with her father. But though he rarely denied his pet anything, he would not yield in this matter.
"My wife and I are a Darby and Joan couple," said Mr. Baxendell. "We are quiet, too, in our ways, and we would never condemn a young girl to the loneliness of a separate room, because we so often find two to be company enough. Mary, our own child, hardly counts as a third in the same sense."
I could not plead for a corner, or say that I should be contented with solitude at High Lea; and so it was settled that music and other teachers should come from a neighbouring town to give Mary periodical lessons and complete her education at home.
The girl displayed more temper about this matter than I had seen in her before.
"As if I should ever do a morsel of good all by myself!" she said. "It is horrid to think of solitary lessons, and I know my teachers will get no credit out of me. I would rather have you than a whole townful of other people. I know I shall hate the very sight of them."
She broke into a passion of tears, and I was obliged to look stern and say, "You will make your parents feel that I have taught you badly, Mary, if you rebel against their wishes, just because they do not agree with your own. Besides, they will not care to have me as a Christmas guest if my presence is to stir up a spirit of opposition in their only child."
"Oh, dear! Miss Anstey," replied Mary, with a helpless gesture; "then I know not what to do. I must not vex my father and mother, though I so badly want you to stay at High Lea."
Then, after a moment's abstraction, "I do wish my cousin Lawrence would marry you. He is very nice, and just the right age—twenty-five."