Mary reddened violently.
“Speak? The weather-cock? What do you mean, child?”
“Please, Miss Smith, you said that the weather-cock told Lucy the truth, the truth, and all the truth.”
“Impossible!” Mary stammered. “I—I should have said, the coachman.” And Mary resumed the story, but with a hot face; a face that blushed more painfully and more intolerably because she was conscious that every eye was upon it, and that a score of small minds were groping for the cause of her confusion.
She remembered, oh, how well she remembered, that the schoolmistress at Clapham had told her that she had every good quality except strength of will. And how thoroughly, how rapidly had she proved the truth of the exception! Freed from control for only twenty-four hours, left for that time to her own devices, she had listened to the first voice that addressed her, believed the first flattering look that fell on her, taken the most ordinary attentions—attentions at which any girl with knowledge of the world or strength of will would have smiled—for gold, real red gold! So that a light look without a spoken word had drawn her heart from her. How it behoved her to despise herself, loathe herself, discipline herself! How she ought to guard herself in the future! Above all, how thankful should she be for the dull but safe routine that fenced, and henceforth would fence, her life from such dangers!
True. Yet how dreary to her young eyes seemed that routine stretched before her! How her courage fainted at the prospect of morning added to morning, formal walk to formal walk, lesson to lesson, one generation of pupils to another! For generation would follow generation, one chubby face would give place to another, and still she would be there, plodding through the stale task, listening with an aching head to the strumming on the harpsichord, saying the same things, finding the same faults, growing slowly into a correcting, scolding, punishing machine. By and by she would know The Fairchild Family by heart, and she would sicken at the “Letters on the Improvement of the Mind.” The children would still be young, but grey hairs would come to her, she would grow stout and dull; and those slender hands, those dainty fingers still white and fine, still meet for love, would be seared by a million needle-pricks and roughened by the wear and tear of ten thousand hours of plain sewing.
She was ungrateful, oh, she was ungrateful to think such thoughts! For in what was her lot worse than the lot of others? Or worse than it had been a week before when, who more humble-minded or contented, more cheerful or helpful than Mary Smith? When her only fault had been a weakness of character which her old schoolmistress hoped would be cured by time? When, though the shadow of an unknown Miss Sibson loomed formidable before her, she had faced her fate bravely and hopefully, supported not a little by the love and good wishes—won by a thousand kind offices—which went with her into the unknown world.
What had happened in the meantime? A little thing, oh, a very little thing. But to think of it under the childrens’ eyes made her face burn again. She had lost her heart—to a man. To a man! The very word seemed improper in that company. How much more improper when the man cared nothing for her, but tossing her a smile for guerdon, had taken her peace of mind and gone his way, with a laugh. At the best, if he had ever dreamt seriously of her, ever done more than deem her an innocent, easily flattered and as lightly to be won, he had changed his mind as quickly as a weather-cock shifts in April. And he had talked—that hurt her, that hurt her most! He had talked of her freely, boasted of her silliness, told his companions what he would do, or what he would not do; made her common to them!
She got away for a few minutes at tea-time. But twenty pairs of eyes followed her from the room and seized on her as she returned. And “Miss Smith, ain’t you well?” piped a tiny treble.
She was controlling her voice to answer—that she was quite well, when Miss Sibson intervened. “Miss Fripp,” she said sombrely, “write ‘Are you not,’ twenty times on your slate after tea! Miss Hilhouse, if you stare in that fashion you will be goggle-eyed. Young ladies, elbows, elbows! Have I not told you a score of times that the art of deportment consists in the right use of the elbow? Now, Miss Claxton, in what does the art of deportment consist?”