Miss Salmon was employed as a daily nursery governess by a family resident across the park who, not hav-ing room for her, had “come to an arrangement” with Miss Kentish for her accommodation at the boarding house; and with her fussiness, her nose pursuit, her humming and her general ineptitude of habit and of thought, she was as it were a fated companion for Rosalie; and it was the case that all the other inmates of the boarding house were, in regard to Rosalie, equally and in the same sense fated. Miss Salmon and they were fated, or fatal, to Rosalie, in the sense that it would have been well then for Rosalie, as always well for any developing young thing, to have been among companions who drew upon her sympathies and called for her consideration. The contrary was here presented to her. She was ripe to be intolerant for she was very full of purpose and purpose is a motive power of much impatience. Miss Salmon, who would have made a saint impatient, made Rosalie, who was not a saint, very impatient and the virus of this impatience was that very soon Rosalie made no attempt to conceal it. It seemed to Rosalie that whenever she projected any plan to Miss Salmon--as to “do” a pit at a theatre--or any theory--as that men and not women were manifestly the cat tribe--it seemed to her that Miss Salmon always hummed with the maddening humming denotive of disapproval, and always prefaced stupendously stubborn idiocy with the “Well, now” and the gulp that alone were sufficient to drive enthusiasm crazy. “Mmmmm--mm. Mmm--mmmm--mm--mm,” would go Miss Salmon, following her pince-nez up and down the little bedroom. And then, the pince-nez poised, “Well, now” (gulp). And Rosalie came to cry, “Oh, never mind. Never mind, for goodness’ sake. I know exactly what you’re going to say so what is the good of saying it?” Miss Salmon nevertheless would say it, in full measure, pressed down at intervals in solid lumps with reiterated “Well, now” (gulp). And then Rosalie would hum to show she was not listening and thus in time to the position that Rosalie, beyond the ordinary changes of everyday conversation, took not the slightest notice of Miss Salmon but busied herself in their room, or came into it or went out of it, precisely as if Miss Salmon, who with her gulps, her fussiness and her balancing was very much there, was in fact not there at all. When Rosalie for the weekly dinner at Aunt Belle’s used to dress in the evening frock of Laetitia’s given her for the purpose by Aunt Belle, she used, at first, to say to Miss Salmon, “There, how do I look, Gertrude? Can you see that mend in the lace?” “Well, now--” (gulp).