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No: the task-mistress took us into the cell, where she was working in company with two other women; she has earned by her constant good conduct the privilege of working in company. One of the Miss Wilbrahams, when all the other visitors except myself had left the cell, turned back and said, "I think I saw you once when I was with Miss Hesketh at her school."
Not only under the lash of my task-mistress, but the drudge of the maid, apprentices and children, I never had a taste of human kindness to soften the rigour of perpetual labour. I had been introduced as an object of abhorrence into the family; as a creature of whom my step-mother, though she had been kind enough to let me live in the house with her own child, could make nothing.
But with a flash of this remaining spirit, I imagine my mother Duty to be a sort of old task-mistress, like the hag of the merchant Abudah, in the Tales of the Genii not a hag though, by any means; on the contrary, my old woman wears a rich old-fashioned gown of black silk, with ruffles of triple blonde-lace, and a coif as rich as that of Pearling Jean; a figure and countenance something like Lady D.S.'s twenty years ago; a clear blue eye, capable of great severity of expression, and conforming in that with a wrinkled brow, of which the ordinary expression is a serious approach to a frown a cautionary and nervous shake of the head; in her withered hand an ebony staff with a crutch head, a Tompion gold watch, which annoys all who know her by striking the quarters as regularly as if one wished to hear them.
But my fair task-mistress only paused, with her finger on the page, smilingly to rebuke me, and then went on with the dictation. She was certainly a Tartar for work. It was a proud moment for me when, in response to my interrogative "Yes?" my companion said "That is all" and closed the book. We had extracted the pith and marrow of six considerable volumes in two hours and a half.
"Now, what does Madam want?" he muttered, and those few words revealed to Nan Sherwood what she had suspected to be the fact about the director that she was a very exacting task-mistress. Miss Penny, nodding slily to Nan and Bess, slipped away to the stage on which the Gypsy camp was set, and around which several men in brigandish looking costumes were lounging.
He went on carefully slanting his hands time about to let the wool slip round, bending his thumbs to act as a drag and obeying his task-mistress to the best of his ability. "That has always been the opinion of your sex all the world over," he said gravely, "if Julian Wemyss entered for a race, what was left for the others but the Consolation Stakes?
"Are you prepared to give up everything everything in the world for art? She is no easy task-mistress, remember! She will want a great deal of your time, and she will rob you of your pleasures, and for her sake you will haf to take care of your body to guard your physical health as though it were the most precious thing on earth.
By half-past six his duties in the store were accomplished, and brushed and furbished up as far as possible, he stood outside the door awaiting his fair task-mistress. Sometimes he wondered at the strange fascination she exercised over him, but generally ended by ascribing it to her beauty and love of art.
He found his fellow-students 'not such a bad set of chaps, and preferred the Piedmontese before the Genoese; but I suspect he mixed not very freely with either. Not only were his days filled with university work, but his spare hours were fully dedicated to the arts under the eye of a beloved task-mistress.
Looking in the face of her future task-mistress was scarcely calculated to awaken a very deep feeling of gratitude. "Now," said Mrs. Chase, addressing her new boarder, "just take off your things, Betsy, and make yourself useful." "My name isn't Betsy, ma'am." "It isn't, isn't it?" "No; it is Grace." "You don't say so!
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