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"Miss Pinshon liked better to travel all night," I said, "because there was no place where she liked to stop to spend the night." "What was your opinion on that subject?" "I was more tired than she was, I suppose." "Has she managed things on the same system for the four years past?" The doctor put the question with such a cool gravity, that I could not help laughing.
So dinner came, and Miss Pinshon said I might get myself ready for dinner and after dinner come back again to my lesson. The lesson must be finished before anything else was done. I had no appetite. Preston was in a fume of vexation, partly roused by my looks, partly by hearing that I was not yet free.
"I doubt whether a church and a minister would be beneficial." "Then you have a nation of heathen at your doors," said Miss Pinshon. "I don't know but they are just as well off," said my aunt. "I doubt if more light would do them any good. They would not understand it." "They must be very dark, if they could not understand light," said my governess.
I never saw such a change in a child in four weeks never!" "Try a different regimen to-morrow, I think," said my governess, whose lustrous black eyes looked at me sick, exactly as they looked at me well. "I shall send for the doctor, if she isn't better," said my aunt. "She's feverish now." "Keeping her bed all day," said Miss Pinshon. "Do you think so?" said my aunt. "I have no doubt of it.
My hand was trembling, my voice was faint; my memory grasped nothing so clearly as Margaret's tears that morning, and Preston's behaviour the preceding day. My cheeks were pale of course. Miss Pinshon said we would begin to set that right with a walk after dinner. The walk was had; but with my hand clasped in Miss Pinshon's I only wished myself at home all the way.
As my aunt set sail for the shores of Europe, and Miss Pinshon and I turned our faces towards Magnolia, I seemed to see before me a weary winter. I was alone now; there was nobody to take my part in small or great things; my governess would have her way. I was so much stronger now that no doubt she thought I could bear it. So it was.
Miss Pinshon discussed natural history to me when we were walking not the thing but the science; she asked me questions in geography when we were eating breakfast, and talked over some puzzle in arithmetic when we were at dinner. I think it was refreshing to her; she liked it; but to me, the sky closed over me in lead colour, one unbroken vault, as I said, when my aunt was away.
"A governess is a very nice thing," said the doctor, taking off his hat and leaning back against the iron railing, "if she knows properly how to set people to play." "To play!" I echoed. I don't know whether Miss Pinshon approves of play." "Oh! She approves of work then, does she?" "She likes work," I answered. "Keeps you busy?" "Most of the day, sir." "The evenings you have to yourself?"
My best historical times thus far, by much, had been over my clay map and my red and black headed pins, studying the changes of England and her people. But Mlle. Géneviève put a new life into mathematics. I could never love the study; but she made it a great deal better than Miss Pinshon made it. Indeed, I believe that to learn anything under Mlle. Géneviève would have been pleasant.
"I don't know why Miss Pinshon has very much given up walking of late." "Then what becomes of you?" "I do not often want to do much of anything," I said. "To-day I came here." "With a book," said the doctor. "Is it work or play?" "My history lesson," I said, showing the book. "I had not quite time enough at home."
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