The Undesirable GovernessCrawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
General
The Undesirable Governess
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Families -- Fiction; Governesses -- Fiction
She would have thought the whole trick an abominable fraud on the part
of Ellen Scott, but quite entered into the fun of the practical joke,
since it had been played by Miss Diana Trevelyan. After all, she never
made any pretence of being magnanimous or bursting with noble
sentiments. She was just an ordinary woman of the world, and a very good
mother, who had been horrified at the idea that her eldest son should
marry badly, and was delighted to find that he was going to marry well
after all; and let any natural mother who would not feel just as she
did, find fault with her and call her worldly!
That is the story of that Undesirable Governess they had at King’s
Follitt last year, and it explains why Lionel and Jocelyn were married
on the same day to two Trevelyan girls who were only very distantly
related. In a nice story-book it would of course have been the penniless
younger son who would have married the governess-heiress, and the heir
of King’s Follitt would have married Anne Trevelyan, who was not
particularly well off. But in real life things do not happen in that
way, and yet people are happy just the same--when they are.
The darker side of the whole affair was that, after Ellen turned into
somebody else, those girls ran perfectly wild, and fell back into their
old ways of poaching and exchanging game for chocolates with the
postman; and they sat up in the King’s Oak by the lodge and peppered the
passing horses on the Malton road with catapults, and potted rooks, and
rode steeplechases in the park on the best horses in the stable; and
they strenuously did all those things which they should have left
undone, to the total exclusion of the other things, till Lady Jane felt
that she was going mad, and it looked as if no one but the matron of a
police station could ever be satisfactory as a governess at King’s
Follitt.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Undesirable Governess, by F. Marion Crawford
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account