LITMIR.BIZ

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      “What did you mean about conversation? I hate you! I shall never speak to you three words if I can help it; but what did you mean about putting off the conversation? I want to know——”

      “Perhaps it will be better to put it off till to-morrow.”

      “I want to have it now. Conversation! as if there ever could be any between you and me.”

      “That is what I have just said. It will be better to put it off,” said Janet, without raising her head, turning over the page of her supposed letter.

      The next thing she heard was a stamp on the floor, suppressed so that it was scarcely a stamp, and an exclamation,

      “I prefer to have it now.”

      “I cannot talk to anyone so far off,” said Janet, and there was another pause.

      Presently she could hear the faint rustling of a person about to get up from a chair, which went on for some time, there being an evident and great reluctance to move. Then there was a sudden plunge. Julia alighted opposite her, on the other side of the table.

      “I want to know what it is—— I want to know what you want with me.”

      Janet sat up, raised her head, putting down her pen.

      “Honestly, and without any more preliminaries?” she said.

      Julia’s eyes gave a single dart of fire.

      “No one ever said I was a thief. I want to know what you want with me.”

      “That is what I call honestly,” Janet replied, and she put away her writing things for the second encounter, the first having thus been successful beyond her hopes.

CHAPTER VII.

       Table of Contents

      “Well,” said Janet, when she found herself looking into the blurred and flushed countenance of the passionate girl. Julia had given vent, in spite of herself, to some tears, and had dashed them away with her hand or her sleeve, leaving a smear, and her hair was hanging wildly round her face, and there was a general air of dilapidation and ruin, though accompanied by few actual signs of warfare. She ought to have torn her frock from top to bottom to justify the general aspect of affairs, but she had not done so, and the smeared cheek and the ragged hair were the only physical certainties of the conflict past. There was still a pucker over each eye, but it was not an assured and dauntless pucker. The fortunes of war, for once, had not turned the usual way.

      “Well—you have been behaving like a fool, but a fool has no meaning. When one can behave like a fool with a meaning I think there must be some sense at the bottom. If I am right, nothing matters that has happened; but if I am wrong——”

      Julia stared with faint comprehension and much impatience. She said—

      “Don’t palaver. What do you want with me?”

      Now, Janet had expected to exercise a little feminine philosophy upon the girl when she had got her in hand—a little banter, a little seriousness—to make her ashamed of herself in the first place, and then to make her see. She was taken a little aback. If she could not make her ashamed nor make her see, what was to be done? The question grew a great deal more serious thus than when it concerned only a locked door. She ran over the circumstances rapidly in her mind, and she saw it would not do to answer according as it at first occurred to her, that she (Janet) personally wanted nothing at all with Julia, except as little to do with her as might be.

      “What I want is simple,” she said, with a smile. “I want to do the work I have been engaged to do, and that is to educate you for as many hours as your mother has fixed for your education. How am I to get that done? for, you may be sure, I mean to do it one way or other. I want to talk it over and discover how it is to be done.”

      “I don’t want it to be done at all”

      “Neither do I,” said Janet, facing the rebel bravely, and bursting into a laugh. “But if you will reflect,” she said, “that does not get us a bit further on, for it must be done. Unless it is done you will grow up like the tramp woman I was telling you of—not at all an interesting person—and I shall break my word. Now, I don’t like to break my word. You don’t care at present about becoming like a tramp, but you will later on.”

      “How dare you say——”

      “Julia,” said the little governess, “I dare to say anything I think proper, or to do anything, so you had better make up your mind to that at once. Such questions are silly. I am not afraid of anyone or anything.”

      Janet threw back her head, which was smaller—as she was smaller in every part—than that of her tall pupil. There is nothing so fearless in life as a girl who is without fear. It is true that the kind of dauntless courage she possesses is largely made up of ignorance, and also comes a little perhaps from the conventional precautions which defend her, though she does not know it. However, the quality is absolute, and Janet had it. She feared nothing, as she said.

      Julia, from under her puckered eyebrows, glared into the clear brown eyes, which had something in them like the sparkle of a Highland stream, and admired the valor which she did not possess: for she was afraid of the coercion which she was always fighting against. She stared, but she said nothing in reply.

      “You see,” said Janet, “I will do what I’ve promised: and if I were you I’d say I will too. It’s much nicer than to have to say I must——”

      Still Julia stared; her lips moved as if she would have spoken, but she uttered no sound.

      “Downstairs,” said Janet, “they expect us to fight. I am afraid you have been so silly that they think you are a fool, and don’t understand anything about what is expected from a gentlewoman. That’s not my opinion, as I told you: but as I shall not give in, whatever you do, it would be very silly to go on fighting forever. We can make something better of it: if you will be convinced that I never shall be afraid of you—no, nor of anyone else,” Janet repeated, with the color mounting in her cheeks.

      Julia continued silent for some time; then, with a sudden burst of harsh sound, asked, “What do you want of me?” and was abruptly silent again, as if a spring had been touched to give forth that voice.

      “I want you to speak when you are spoken to,” said Janet.

      The girl, who evidently expected something of much larger scope, cried “Oh!” but said no more.

      “I want you to do as I tell you—for so many hours in the day—from ten to one, is it? That’s not very long. You can be a demon after that, if you please, and dance your war-dance.”

      “What do you mean by—dancing my war-dance?”

      “Behaving like a fiend, or a Red Indian, or a tramp in the roads: so long as you are in your senses from ten to one.”

      Julia stared again, but made no reply.

      “But you must remember,” said Janet, “that in the place I come from, where there are no Red Indians, there is a point of honor; and whatever one undertakes to do one does. If you see the sense of what I say, and give me your word, it is once and forever; not promise one day and break it the next. That is a sort of thing I don’t understand. One promises, and it is for life and death. It does not matter what comes in the way. If you were to be killed for it, it would have to be done.”

      Julia stared for a few moments more, and then——

      “I can see the sense of that,” she said.

      “To be sure. I knew you would when you gave yourself time to look at it. Well, then, you can see that to call in other people or other considerations is of no use between you and me. At the last we should always have to talk it over between ourselves. If you

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