"Well, Doctor Harris, for instance," returned Miss Featherstone, smiling, and blushing a little.
"Doctor Harris has certainly made love to her, and Dick as certainly hasn't. I wonder—oh, how I wonder!—whether he was in earnest the other day?" Her large blue eyes were fixed scrutinizingly on the governess, although she thought, not said, these things. "He thinks you do a great deal too much in the house, and was quite abusive to me about it: he actually swore when he discovered the amount of your salary. Now, my dear Miss Featherstone, you may name your own price: I'll give you anything you ask, for no amount of money can represent the comfort you are to me."
"I don't want one cent more than I at present receive," replied the governess, kissing her fondly.
A few days after Colonel Pinckney—a self-constituted committee, apparently, for the prevention of cruelty to governesses—surprised Miss Featherstone in the school-room. She was seated before the fire in a low chair, little Harry, who was fretful from a cold, lying on her lap, the other children clustered around her. As he softly opened the door he heard these words: "'Blondine,' replied the fairy Bienveillante sadly,' no matter what you see or hear, do not lose courage or hope.'" As she told the story in low, drowsy tones she was also mending the heel of a little stocking.
"It is abominable!" the colonel cried: "you are worn out with fatigue: I hear it in your voice. I called you a 'white slave' to Virginia: nothing is truer. You've today given out supplies from the store-room, you were in the kitchen a long time with the new cook, you set the lunch-table—don't deny it, for I saw you—besides taking care of the children and hearing their lessons."
"While Mrs. Pinckney is ill this is absolutely necessary," she returned with decision: "of course it makes some confusion having a new cook—"
"Children," he interrupted, "this séance is to be broken up: scamper off to Adèle to get ready: I'll ask mamma to let you drive to the station in the coupé to meet Mr. Brown: there will certainly be room for such little folks.—And as to you, Miss Featherstone, as head of the house pro tem. I order you to put on your hat and cloak and walk in the garden for a while with me: the paths are quite hard and dry."
"Mamma! mamma! we are to drive to the station: Uncle Dick says so," shrieked the children, breaking up a delicious little doze into which Mrs. Pinckney had fallen while Adèle sat at her sewing in the darkened room.
"Is Uncle Dick going with you?"
"No, he is going to walk in the garden with Miss Featherstone."