'Very well, ma'am; I don't mind telling her that,' she returned, looking wooden and dull again, as her fingers closed over the money; once more the same sullen, unimpressionable woman we had at first seen, as she closed the gates upon us.
'O Mary, what a dreadful place! How could any one be expected to be better for living there!' ejaculated Lilian. 'How could they select a woman like Mrs Gower to influence her fellow-creatures!'
'There certainly appears to have been a great mistake somewhere,' I thoughtfully replied. 'So benevolent a scheme might surely be better carried out.'
I may as well state here what came to my knowledge later—respecting the Home and its management. Mrs Osborne, the founder, had commenced her work of benevolence without sufficient experience and knowledge of the class she wished to benefit. Like many other benevolent people, she believed that love was all that was needed for the work; and the lady she had at first engaged to act as superintendent was as enthusiastic and non-executive as herself. The consequences were disastrous; and it told much in Mrs Osborne's favour that she had the courage to try again. Unfortunately, in her anxiety to avoid her former error, she ran into the opposite extreme. Mrs Gower was selected from numerous other applicants on account of her having previously held office as matron of a prison, and possessing testimonials as to her special fitness for the executive department.
Accustomed to deal with the worst side of human nature, and to the enforcement of the necessarily rigid rules of prison-life, in which all must pass through one routine, Mrs Gower had become a mere disciplinarian, treating those under her charge in the Home as though their minds were all of precisely the same pattern, and that a very bad one.
If half the stories which reached me respecting her luxurious self-indulgent life were true, the effect upon those to whom she was supposed to be an example was undoubtedly bad. And if there were good grounds for the statement that her appointment to the office of prison matron had been to her a rise in life, it quite sufficiently accounted for the want of refinement in thought and habit, which occasioned her to live too luxuriously, and deck herself in too rich clothing for one living amongst women supposed to be endeavouring to strengthen themselves against yielding to temptation.
Again, good as he undoubtedly was, Mr Wyatt, upon whom Mrs Osborne depended for spiritual help, was not fitted for the task. He was too young, as well as too naturally timid and shy, to manage a number of women, who deceived him with the pretence of reformation when it suited their purpose better than openly laughing at him. Long afterwards, he told me how terribly he used to dread his visits to the Home, and how much he was troubled at the little effect of his teachings. It took him a long time to understand that the best natures might appear to be the worst under such training as Mrs Gower's.
That Mrs Osborne herself was quite satisfied with the new management, is too much to say. But although Mrs Gower was not a woman after her heart, past failures had rendered Mrs Osborne distrustful of her own judgment; and she could not deny that there at least appeared to be better effects produced now than during the former management. Although there were occasional failures, which nothing could gloss over, Mrs Gower could point to the fact that a certain number of the inmates were annually drafted into service, and whatever became of them, they did not reappear at the Home.