not listen to the penniless young sub-altern, if he speaks, she weakly consents, because he looks so sad, poor fellow! Young Knollys has been watching for this opportunity for a good many chapters, but he has never been able to get a word with the fair young English girl alone, because she is so jealously guarded by that old dragon, stout, red-faced Lady Charteris. For once they have eluded her vigilance. Now his whole manner changes, his face works, he seems about to say something, he has even begun with "My dar—" when the other young man—who, of course, also loves the fair English girl—suddenly walks in. Something ought to be done to rid the place of this fellow, for somehow young Knollys is easily discouraged, and does not soon get started again. He goes to Scotland for the shooting, or his regiment is ordered to India, but he doesn't declare himself, and the fair young English girl sadly droops and pines nearly all the rest of the way through the book.
The morning-room is a peculiar feature of the rambling old house. When the time comes for bringing home the bride, all that the stalwart young Englishman does, or seemingly needs to do, in order to beautify the home of his fathers for the coming of the young wife, is to get new chintz covers for the morning-room. Strange to say, the whole house is then in readiness for its fair young mistress, and when she sees those beautiful new chintz chair-covers she looks no further; she is delighted with her new home. All that she then needs to make her felicity perfect is to have the keys handed over to her by the dowager.
It is perhaps unnecessary to say that antimacassars are still in fashion here, and that no shabby old drawing-room is complete without them.
Of all the people who live in the old red brick house, or the gray old mansion—as the case may be—perhaps no one leads quite so hard and dreary a life as the governess. She is despised by the servants, ignored or snubbed by the ladies of the family, abused by the children. She slaves from morning till night. When she has nothing else to do she is straining her short-sighted eyes over exercises in the cold, dingy schoolroom. She rarely has anything to wear but a shabby brown frock. Even if her old uncle dies and leaves his poor sister's only child a small legacy, the best she can hope for is a decent gown of black stuff and a cottage straw with a white ribbon upon it. (Bonnets and shawls are still fashionable here.)
I am satisfied that the governess does not have enough to eat. No wonder that she is such a poor little washed-out creature! She cuts enormous piles of bread-and-butter and pours out quantities of a sloppy beverage for the children's schoolroom tea, but no one hears of her having a share, not even when the children have been good and, as a great treat, are allowed a meat tea.
If you are the governess here, old, and ugly to boot, there is no hope for you; you will have to go on cutting bread-and-butter, like Werther's Charlotte. If you are young and pretty, you may turn out to be somebody else, or you may discover your long-lost grandfather, or the young squire, who has come down to the Hall for the shooting, may notice you and say to himself:
"Egad, that's a deucedly pretty girl! It's a beastly shame that she should be tormented by those brats of my sister's!" And he may marry you, after quarreling with all of his relations.
What a contrast to the life of the dingy, spectacled governess is that of cook! Now, cook is a person of consequence in the gray old mansion. The old master respects her because that woman knows how to make sauces, by Jove! while the children have a genuine affection for one who has undoubted access to the jam-pots. She always has plenty to eat, has cook. The servants' table at the Hall is loaded with good things, of which cook has her full share. And if she is feeling a bit low in her mind, cook does
