She would have done so, but already the post was filled by a kinswoman of her own. She did what was next best, and sent me the particulars of two situations, either of which she believed she had influence to obtain for me. I quote from her letter about the two places. "Lady Minshull will engage you, Lois, if you think such a place as you would occupy at Westwood Park would meet your views. I have no fear as to your qualifications. Her children are young and accustomed to obey, which is a great advantage, especially to a beginner at tuition. But while you will have all outward comforts, the social atmosphere of Westwood is a cold one. You will be the governess, and as such, Lady Minshull will look down upon you with an air of conscious superiority. She will talk to you about her children in a thoroughly common sense way; but your intercourse will be a purely business one, and if you were to spend half your life under that roof, you and Lady Minshull would never come any nearer. Friendship or affection between her and a governess, however gifted and well-born, would never cross her mind as a possibility." "Mind, you would have absolutely nothing to complain of; so far as externals go. But you would never call Westwood 'home,' and there would be some danger of your carrying a mummified heart in a living human body, for want of being allowed to love those among whom you found yourself. I do not know whether my being in the neighbourhood would be any compensation, but as my husband is Lord Minshull's lawyer, he goes to the Park very often, and I occasionally, so that we should meet sometimes." "The other situation open to you is in a Yorkshire vicarage. There is a large family, eight altogether the two eldest boys are away at school, and two tiny girls are not old enough to need teaching; but your actual pupils would be five." "You will smile at the arithmetic which adds two, two, and four, and makes the total nine, but the fifth is a girl of fourteen, the only child of a wealthy man in the immediate neighbourhood. She is taught with the vicar's children, and lives at the vicarage, within reach of her parents, who cannot wholly part with her, but who feel the advantage of companionship for their one darling." "You will be surprised to find that the salaries offered by the titled lady and the poor parson are identical, namely, forty pounds a year and laundress's expenses. The vicar could not afford so much but for the liberal terms he receives with Mary Baxendell, but he is a conscientious man, and gives the governess her full share of this payment."