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Miss Arthuret and Dolores were at Penbeacon, seriously considering of the scheme of converting the old farm house into a kind of place of study for girls who wanted to work at various technicalities, and to fit themselves for usefulness or for self- maintenance.
'A woman! Oh! cried Susan in horror, 'and she's stopping at the Gap. Oh! 'My dear Susie, you must have seen ladies on tricycles before, whispered her sister. 'No, indeed, I am thankful to say I have not! If it should be Miss Arthuret! said Susan, with inexpressible tones in her voice.
Arthuret was called away by the imperative summons to the butcher, she spoke more freely. 'Your mother looks terrified at being so routed up again. 'Oh, mother will be happy anywhere; and how can I stay with these stick-in-the-mud people, just like what I have read about? 'And have gibbeted! Really, Arthurine, I should call them very generous!
Arthuret, 'for we should be very glad to lend it to you. A whole pile was on the table, and Mrs. Merrifield looked at them with feeble thanks and an odd sort of conscious dread, though she could with perfect truth have denied either 'taking it' or reading it. Bessie came to her relief. 'Thank you, she said; 'we do; some of us have it.
Merrifield, though unscathed, was much more hurt and annoyed than either her husband or her daughter, especially at Susan and Bessie being termed old maids. She DID think it very ungrateful, and wondered how Mrs. Arthuret could have suffered such a thing to be done. Only the poor woman was quite foolish about her daughter could have had no more authority than a cat. 'So much for modern education.
Merrifield was rather shocked, but she felt that she herself was in a glass house, was, in fact, keeping a literary daughter, so she only committed herself to, 'She is very young. 'Only one-and-twenty, returned Mrs. Arthuret triumphantly; 'but then she has had such advantages, and made such use of them. Everything seems to come at once, though, perhaps, it is unthankful to say so.
Arthuret contrived to get a private interview with Mrs. Merrifield. 'Oh! dear Mrs. Merrifield, I am so grieved, and so is Arthurine. We were told that the Admiral was so excessively angry, and he is so kind. I could not bear for him to think Arthurine meant anything personal. 'Indeed, said Mrs. Merrifield, rather astonished. 'But is he so very angry? for it is all a mistake.
Miss Mohun and Miss Merrifield encountered Miss Prescott and Agatha among a perfect herd of cycles, making Bessie laugh over the recollections of the horror caused at Stokesley by the arrival of Arthurine Arthuret on a tricycle twelve years previously.
All things are comparative, and to one whose assured income had been 70 pounds a year, 800 pounds was unbounded wealth; to one who had spent her life in schoolrooms and lodgings, the Gap was a lordly demesne. 'And what do you think was the first thing my sweet child said? added Mrs. Arthuret, with her eyes glittering through tears.
Rockstone was used to its Marquis's speeches, and always enjoyed them; and he handed the prize-books to the recipients with a shake of the hand, and a word or two of congratulation appropriate to each, especially when he knew their names; and then he declared that they were about to hear what education was good for, much better than from himself, from such noted examples as Miss Arthuret and Miss Merrifield, better known to them as Mesa.
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