During this speech Annie Brunel had time to examine her future mistress. She was not obviously mad. Indeed, the coal-black hair, the rosy cheeks, the small and pretty mouth, the neat figure and small hands, were the natural ornaments of a person who seemed mentally far too colourless and contented ever to be troubled by intellectual derangement. Yet the new governess was as much puzzled by her reception as by the letter she had received.
"There now, take this easy-chair—let me draw it in for you—and we shall have a chat over the matter. I have hitherto only had a morning governess, you know; the poor girl took unwell some time ago, and she has not been here for some days now."
At this precise moment, Miss Betham was upstairs, packing her music and preparing for final departure. But to the good-natured and mentally limp Mrs. Hubbard, lying came as easily as telling the truth. She would not have told a lie to secure a particular end; but in the course of conversation she did not seem to recognise the necessity of being exact in her statements. She lied broadly and often; but she lied harmlessly—at least she meant to do no harm by her lying.
"I won't ask you any questions, Miss Brunel—not one. You have your own reasons for leaving the stage; and I'm not going to quarrel with what enables me to have your assistance (if we can make arrangements, that is), which I don't doubt for a moment."
"I am quite inexperienced, as I told you in my letter——"
"Oh, that does not signify," said the other, affably.
Annie Brunel looked up with a glance of astonishment, which any woman not a fool would have noticed.
"And if you think that I know enough to attempt to get into the way of teaching, I shall leave all the other arrangements to you. I am not anxious about the salary you may be inclined to give me; because, after all, it is only a trial. And if you think I am worth to you, in the meantime, so much per week as will keep me in food and pay my lodgings——"
"Your lodgings! I could not think of submitting you to the misery of lodgings so long as I have a comfortable room to offer you."
Mrs. Hubbard did not look like a practical joker; but her reception of the new governess looked uncommonly like a practical joke.