Ah! Ju! Janet felt a little injured, wounded in her pride, when that consideration suddenly came in and thrust itself upon her. She had anticipated a great many evils, but she had never thought that to master an unruly girl taller than herself would be the chief or the first feature of her warfare. It was almost ludicrous to think of Ju, that child, in her short petticoats and flying hair, as a synonym of fate. Janet had been accustomed to be the favorite of the children wherever she went. The little ones had always liked her, gathered about her, petitioned her to tell them stories, to sing them some of her funny songs, to make up games for them. She was famous in Clover and for quite twelve miles round for this quality. “Delightful with children!” that was what was said of her. And in looking forward upon the future she had never taken into account any difficulty in that respect. The difficulties she had expected had been in (perhaps) the exacting and unjust mother, (perhaps) the jealous and spiteful girl, (perhaps) the undue admiration of the male persons about, and their universal feeling that the governess was much better worth looking at and talking to than the ladies of the house. These are the difficulties chiefly set forth in novels, and, after all, it was from novels that Janet derived her chief conceptions of life. But a struggle with a wayward pupil had not occurred to her as one of her possible trials. After all, to look at it impartially, it was a not unnatural difficulty. She ought to have considered it one of the things most likely to happen, but it was a poor unromantic difficulty with nothing at all spirit-stirring in it. To wrestle in spirit with a naughty girl, to fight for obedience, for nice manners, for lessons learnt! Oh dear, oh dear! These were no doubt things as distinctly belonging to a governess’s business as her grammar or her book of marks--but Janet had not taken them into account, and they seemed disappointing and ignoble trifles after the things for which she was prepared. The dinner was good; the table was nicely served. It was apparent that the Harwoods were not people of yesterday. Their silver was heavy and old, marked not with a crest, but with a solemn “H,” as a family perhaps not deeply acquainted with fantastic trophies of heraldry, but extremely conscious of the credit of their name. And everything shone and sparkled with that nicety of good usage which is never more perceptible than in those well-to-do English houses were splendor is never aimed at.