Mrs. Danvers laughed too. "It is rather funny," she said in her good-natured way, "and the worst of it is that Joanna made me promise to give her system a fair trial, and as I never broke my word to any of my children yet, I am giving it a fair trial. And that is why, my dear, I am so glad of your help. When Miss McDonald wrote to me and asked me if I could find a holiday engagement for one of her governesses, I jumped at the chance of having you. For, I said to myself that a governess of Gertrude McDonald's would, of course, have discipline and all that sort of thing at her fingers ends." "Of course," said poor Margaret rather feebly, as Mrs. Danvers paused not so much for a reply as to gain breath. "Unyielding firmness without harshness on your side, implicit obedience without fear on theirs is what Joanna aims at I believe," said Mrs. Danvers cheerfully, "and it certainly sounds a delightful method. By the way, if you get on with the children, Joanna has an idea of asking you to stay with her permanently. She is going out to California next spring, and will have to look out for a governess to go with her, as, of course, she is taking the children. Would you like to go, or do you prefer school-work?" "I--I don't know," stammered Margaret, who totally unprepared for such a proposition, did not know what answer to make. "I should have to ask El----(my friend, I mean) what she thought of it. Ask her advice, I mean." "Quite so, quite so," Mrs. Danvers said. "But that's all in the future, of course. The first thing you have to do is to make the acquaintance of the children, and, as I said, Hannah has evidently carefully kept them up in the nursery this morning. She is devoted to them, and can't bear the idea of having to share her charge of them with a governess. So I am afraid you may have a little unpleasantness to put up with at first. But she is a good creature, and if you exercise a little tact you will soon be able to smooth her down." "Yes," said Margaret even more feebly than before. But Mrs. Danvers was not an observant woman, and she was so far from suspecting the hidden dismay with which her new holiday governess listened to her, that later in the day she gave it as her opinion that underneath her exceedingly quiet manner Miss Carson concealed an iron will, and that the reign of stern discipline she was about to inaugurate would have an excellent effect on her grandchildren. And she was genuinely astonished at the derision with which her own children received this prophecy. CHAPTER X ELEANOR AT WINDY GAP