Johnny Ludlow Sixth Series Part 61

Registered names we can't mistake."

Mrs. Moffit read her notes--taken down a week ago. "Miss West. Educated in first-cla.s.s school at Richmond; remained in it as teacher. Very good references from the ladies keeping it. Father, Colonel in India."

"But----"

"You do not wish to go into a school again?" spoke Mrs. Moffit, closing the ledger with a snap, and peremptorily drowning what the applicant was about to say.

"Oh, dear, no, I am only leaving to better myself, as the maids say,"

replied the young lady, smiling.

"And you wish for a good salary?"

"If I can get it. One does not care to work hard for next to nothing."

"Or else I have--let me see--two--three situations on my books. Very comfortable, I am instructed, but two of them offer ten pounds a-year, the other twelve."

The young lady drew herself slightly up with an involuntary movement.

"Quite impossible, madam, that I could take any one of them."

Mrs. Moffit picked up a letter and consulted it, looking at the young lady from time to time, as if taking stock of her appearance. "I received a letter this morning from the country--a family require a well-qualified governess for their one little girl. Your testimonials as to qualifications might suit--and you are, I believe, a gentlewoman----"

"Oh, yes; my father was----"

"Yes, yes, I remember--I've got it down; don't worry me," impatiently spoke the oracle, cutting short the interruption. "So far you might suit: but in other respects--I hardly know what to think."

"But why?" asked the other timidly, blushing a little under the intent gaze.

"Well, you are very young, for one thing; and they might think you too good-looking."

The girl's blush grew red as a rose; she had delicate features and it made her look uncommonly pretty. A half-smile sat in her soft, dark hazel eyes.

"Surely that could not be an impediment. I am not so good-looking as all that!"

"That's as people may think," was the significant answer. "Some families will not take a pretty governess--afraid of their sons, you see. This family says nothing about looks; for aught I know there may be no sons in it. 'Thoroughly competent'--reading from the letter--'a gentlewoman by birth, of agreeable manners and lady-like. Salary, first year, to be forty pounds.'"

"And will you not recommend me?" pleaded the young governess, her voice full of entreaty. "Oh, please do! I know I should be found fully competent, and promise you that I would do my best."

"Well, there may be no harm in my writing to the lady about you,"

decided Mrs. Moffit, won over by the girl's gentle respect--with which she did not get treated by all her clients. "Suppose you come here again on Monday next?"

The end of the matter was that Miss West was engaged by the lady mentioned--no other than Mrs. Carradyne. And she journeyed down into Worcestershire to enter upon the situation.

But clever (and generally correct) Mrs. Moffit made one mistake, arising, no doubt, from the chronic state of hurry she was always in.

"Miss West is the daughter of the late Colonel William West," she wrote, "who went to India with his regiment a few years ago, and died there."

What Miss West had said to her was this: "My father, a clergyman, died when I was a little child, and my uncle William, Colonel West, the only relation I had left, died three years ago in India." Mrs. Moffit somehow confounded the two.

This might not have mattered on the whole. But, as you perceive, it conveyed a wrong impression at Leet Hall.

"The governess I have engaged is a Miss West; her father was a military man and a gentleman," spake Mrs. Carradyne one morning at breakfast to Captain Monk. "She is rather young--about twenty, I fancy; but an older person might never get on at all with Kate."

"Had good references with her, I suppose?" said the Captain.

"Oh, yes. From the agent, and especially from the ladies who have brought her up."

"Who was her father, do you say?--a military man?"

"Colonel William West," a.s.sented Mrs. Carradyne, referring to the letter she held. "He went to India with his regiment and died there."

"I'll refer to the army-list," said the Captain; "daresay it's all right. And she shall keep Kate in order, or I'll know the reason why."

The evening sunlight lay on the green plain, on the white fields from which the grain had been reaped, and on the beautiful woods glowing with the varied tints of autumn. A fly was making its way to Leet Hall, and its occupant, looking out of it on this side and that, in a fever of ecstasy, for the country scene charmed her, thought how favoured was the lot of those who could live out their lives amidst its surroundings.

In the drawing-room at the Hall, watching the approach of this same fly, stood Mrs. Hamlyn, a frown upon her haughty face. Philip Hamlyn was still detained in the West Indies, and since her reconciliation to her father, she would go over with her baby-boy to the Hall and remain there for days together. Captain Monk liked to have her, and he took more notice of the baby than he had ever taken of a baby yet. For when Kate was an infant he had at first shunned her, because she had cost Katherine her life. This baby, little Walter, was a particularly forward child, strong and upright, walked at ten months old, and much resembled his mother in feature. In temper also. The young one would stand st.u.r.dily in his little blue shoes and defy his grandpapa already, and a.s.sert his own will, to the amused admiration of Captain Monk.

Eliza, utterly wrapt up in her child, saw her father's growing love for him with secret delight; and one day when he had the boy on his knee, she ventured to speak out a thought that was often in her heart.

"Papa," she said, with impa.s.sioned fervour, "_he_ ought to be the heir, your own grandson; not Harry Carradyne."

Captain Monk simply stared in answer.

"He lies in the _direct_ succession; he has your own blood in his veins.

Papa, you ought to see it."

Certainly the gallant sailor's manners were improving. For perhaps the first time in his life he suppressed the hot and abusive words rising to his tongue--that no son of that man, Hamlyn, should come into Leet Hall--and stood in silence.

"_Don't_ you see it, papa?"

"Look here, Eliza: we'll drop the subject. When my brother, your uncle, was dying, he wrote me a letter, enjoining me to make Emma's son the heir, failing a son of my own. It was right it should be so, he said.

Right it is; and Harry Carradyne will succeed me. Say no more."

Thus forbidden to say more, Eliza Hamlyn thought the more, and her thoughts were not pleasant. At one time she had feared her father might promote Kate Danc.o.x to the heirship, and grew to dislike the child accordingly. Latterly, for the same reason, she had disliked Harry Carradyne; hated him, in fact. She herself was the only remaining child of the house, and her son ought to inherit.

She stood this evening at the drawing-room window, this and other matters running in her mind. Miss Kate, at the other end of the room, had prevailed on Uncle Harry (as she called him) to play a game at toy ninepins. Or perhaps he had prevailed on her: anything to keep her tolerably quiet. She was in her teens now, but the older she grew the more troublesome she became; and she was remarkably small and childish-looking, so that strangers took her to be several years younger than she really was.

"This must be your model governess arriving, Aunt Emma," exclaimed Mrs.

Hamlyn, as the fly came up the drive.

"I hope it is," said Mrs. Carradyne; and they all looked out. "Oh, yes, that's an Evesham fly--and a ramshackle thing it appears."

"I wonder you did not send the carriage to Evesham for her, mother,"

remarked Harry, picking up some of the nine-pins which Miss Kate had swept off the table with her hand.

Mrs. Hamlyn turned round in a blaze of anger. "Send the carriage to Evesham for the governess. What absurd thing will you say next, Harry?"

The young man laughed in good humour. "Does it offend one of your prejudices, Eliza?--a thousand pardons, then. But really, nonsense apart, I can't see why the carriage should not have gone for her. We are told she is a gentlewoman. Indeed, I suppose anyone else would not be eligible, as she is to be made one of ourselves."

"And think of the nuisance it will be! Do be quiet, Harry! Kate ought to have been sent to school."