Then she was obliged to be punctual to a moment in her hours; a grievous yoke to her who had never been educated to submit to any. To dress with the most careful attention to neatness, though there was "nothing but a pack of women to look at her"—to listen to "a prosy book"—a book, I forgot to say, was read aloud in the work-room—instead of gossiping and having a little fun; and to walk out on Sundays under the wing of that old, hideous harridan, Mrs. Sterling, instead of going with her companions where she pleased. In short, it was worse "than negro slavery," but there was no help for it—there she was, and there she was obliged to stay.
Well, and did she improve under this good discipline? Was she any the better for it? I am sorry to say very little.
There are subjects that are almost unimprovable. She was, by nature, a poor, shallow, weedy thing; her education had been the worst possible for her. Evil habits, false views, low aims, had been imbibed, and not one fault corrected while young; and self-experience, which rectifies in most so much that is wrong, seemed to do nothing for her. There was no substance to work upon. Mrs. Fisher was soon heartily tired of her, and could have regretted her complaisance to Mrs. Danvers' wishes in receiving her against her judgment; but she was too good to send her away. She laughed, and accepted her as a penance for her sins, she said—as a thorn in the flesh—and she let the thorn rankle there. She remembered her honored Fisher, and the scene by the bed-side of poor Saunders. She looked upon the endurance of this plague as a fresh offering to the adored memory.
She bore this infliction like a martyr for a long time; at last a smart young tailor fell in love with Myra at church—a place where he had been better employed thinking of other things. And so I believe he thought after he had married her, in spite of the white dress and silk bonnet, and the reticule with pink ribbons, and the bride's pocket-money, which Mrs. Fisher bestowed with more pleasure and alacrity than even she had been known to do upon many a worthier subject.
CHAPTER VIII.
"Yet once more, oh, ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me—"
Milton's Lycidas.
I must beg of you to slip over a portion of time, and to suppose about two years passed over our heads, and we return to Lettice, who has passed that period at General Melwyn's.
So useful, so cheerful, so thoroughly good, so sincerely pious, so generously disinterested she was; and the transformation she had accomplished was astonishing.
And was she as happy herself as she made others? Nobody at the Hazels thought of exactly asking that question. And yet they might have reflected a little, and inquired, whether to one, the source of so much comfort to others, the natural felicity of her age was not denied?