Confessions of a Young Lady: Her Doings and MisdoingsMarsh, Richard
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Confessions of a Young Lady: Her Doings and Misdoings
Marsh, Richard
England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Girls -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
There was, that term, a governess who must have been almost as great a
goose I was. I am not sure that she was quite so right in the head as
she might have been. She only stayed that term. Why Mrs Sawyer ever
had her is more than I can say. Her name was Frazer--Mamie Frazer. Her
autograph--suggestive of a fly slipping over the paper after a visit
to the inkstand--stares at me out of my birthday book at this moment.
She was the most speechless person I ever encountered. So to speak,
you might carry on a conversation with her for hours and she would
never say a word. As a listener she was immense. By degrees her
attitude so got upon your nerves that I, for one, would feel like
murder.
"Say something!" I would beseech of her. "Do please say something!
Don't you know that I have been talking myself hoarse and you haven't
uttered a single word."
She would only sigh. To a person who was fond of conversational
give-and-take it was trying.
And the name of the girl who shared my bedroom was
Travers--Hester--generally known as Hetty--Travers. She was, well, she
is one of my dearest friends at this hour, and she may see this, so I
don't want to say anything to hurt her feelings, but she certainly was
a mischievous imp. Mischief brimmed out of her finger-tips. And the
point was that she had such an excessively demure air that you never
had the faintest notion that she was that kind of person till the
truth was forced upon you. Even then you gave her the benefit of the
doubt; or you tried to--at least I did--until it was obviously absurd
to attempt to do so any longer since there was no doubt. Reverence!
she did not know what it was. She had not a mite of respect for me,
though I was a good three months her senior. She used to make fun of
all the varying things I held most sacred--that is, while the mood was
on me.
That inveterate habit of hers ought to have made me suspect her. But I
was ever a Una for innocence. She was always taking me in. She had an
insidious way about her which would take in anybody.
One night we were going to bed. I had one stocking off, and was
wondering how the holes did get into the toes; I used to bribe other
girls to do my darning. It cost me frightful sums. We were talking
about other people's peculiarities, as was our agreeable custom.
"You know Miss Frazer told me to walk with her when she took us out
to-night. I kept talking to her all the time, and yet the whole way
there and back she never spoke a word. I believe she's going mad."
"I shouldn't wonder."
Hetty was doing her hair. I was wishing she would make haste, because
she was using the only glass we had, and it seemed to me that she
never would have done with it. What discussions we had about that
looking-glass! We took it in turns to use it first, and whoever had
first turn used to hang on to it as if it was the Koh-i-noor.
Something struck me in her tone.
"Why shouldn't you wonder?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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