These children have been coached to say `Yes, my lady,' and `No, my
lady,' and `I thank you, my lady, very much'; and their mother has
already been hoping that Mrs. Fairchild will haply pass through the
lane and see the emblazoned yellow chariot at the wicket. But just now
she is all maternal--`These be my jewels.' See with what pride she
fingers the sampler embroidered by one of her girls, knowing well that
`spoilt' Miss Augusta Noble could not do such embroidery to save her
life--that life which, through her Promethean naughtiness in playing
with fire, she was so soon to lose.
Other exemplary samplers hang on the wall yonder. On the mantelshelf
stands a slate, with an ink-pot and a row of tattered books, and other
tokens of industry. The schoolroom, beyond a doubt. Lady Noble has
expressed a wish to see the children here, in their own haunt, and her
hostess has led the way hither, somewhat flustered, gasping many
apologies for the plainness of the apartment. A plain apartment it is:
dark, bare-boarded, dingy-walled. And not merely a material gloom
pervades it. There is a spiritual gloom, also--the subtly oppressive
atmosphere of a room where life has not been lived happily.
Though these children are cheerful now, it is borne in on us by the
atmosphere (as preserved for us by Morland's master-hand) that their
life is a life of appalling dismalness.
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