She shut the book, and looked at her teacher. “I wonder how it is,” she resumed, “that I get on so much better with my lessons here than I did at the Home? And yet it’s foolish of me to wonder. I get on better, because you are teaching me, of course. But I don’t feel satisfied with myself. I’m the same helpless creature—I feel your kindness, and can’t make any return to you—for all my learning. I should like—” She left the thought in her unexpressed, and opened her copy-book. “I’ll do my writing now,” she said, in a quiet resigned way. “Perhaps I may improve enough, some day, to keep your accounts for you.” She chose her pen a little absently, and began to write. Amelius looked over her shoulder, and laughed; she was writing his name. He pointed to the copper-plate copy on the top line, presenting an undeniable moral maxim, in characters beyond the reach of criticism:—Change Is A Law Of Nature. “There, my dear, you are to copy that till you’re tired of it,” said the easy master; “and then we’ll try overleaf, another copy beginning with letter D.”
Sally laid down her pen. “I don’t like ‘Change is a law of Nature’,” she said, knitting her pretty eyebrows into a frown. “I looked at those words yesterday, and they made me miserable at night. I was foolish enough to think that we should always go on together as we go on now, till I saw that copy. I hate the copy! It came to my mind when I was awake in the dark, and it seemed to tell me that we were going to change some day. That’s the worst of learning—one knows too much, and then there’s an end of one’s happiness. Thoughts come to you, when you don’t want them. I thought of the young lady we saw last week in the park.”
She spoke gravely and sadly. The bright contentment which had given a new charm to her eyes since she had been at the cottage, died out of them as Amelius looked at her. What had become of her childish manner and her artless smile? He drew his chair nearer to her. “What young lady do you mean?” he asked.
Sally shook her head, and traced lines with her pen on the blotting paper. “Oh, you can’t have forgotten her! A young lady, riding on a grand white horse. All the people were admiring her. I wonder you cared to look at me, after that beautiful creature had gone by. Ah, she knows all sorts of things that I don’t—she doesn’t sound a note at a time on the piano, and as often as not the wrong one; she can say her multiplication table, and knows all the cities in the world. I dare say she’s almost as learned as you are. If you had her living here with you, wouldn’t you like it better than only having me!” She dropped her arms on the table, and laid her head on them wearily. “The dreadful streets!” she murmured, in low tones of despair. “Why did I think of the dreadful streets, and the night I met with you—after I had seen the young lady? Oh, Amelius, are you tired of me? are you ashamed of me?” She lifted her head again, before he could answer, and controlled herself by a sudden effort of resolution. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me this morning,” she said, looking at him with a pleading fear in her eyes. “Never mind my nonsense—I’ll do the copy!” She began to write the unendurable assertion that change is a law of Nature, with trembling fingers and fast heaving breath. Amelius took the pen gently out of her hand. His voice faltered as he spoke to her.
“We will give up the lessons for today, Sally. You have had a bad night’s rest, my dear, and you are feeling it—that’s all. Do you think you are well enough to come out with me, and try if the air will revive you a little?”
She rose, and took his hand, and kissed it. “I believe, if I was dying, I should get well enough to go out with you! May I ask one little favour? Do you mind if we don’t go into the park today?”
“What has made you take a dislike to the park, Sally?”
“We might meet the beautiful young lady again,” she answered, with her head down. “I don’t want to do that.”
“We will go wherever you like, my child. You shall decide—not I.”
She gathered up her dress from the floor, and hurried away to her room—without looking back at him as usual when she opened the door.