CHAPTER FIRST.

INTRODUCTION.

One bright afternoon, or rather evening, in May, two girls, with basket in hand, were seen leaving the little seaport town in which they resided, for the professed purpose of primrose gathering, but in reality to enjoy the pure air of the first summer-like evening of a season, which had been unusually cold and backward.  Their way lay through bowery lanes scented with sweet brier and hawthorn, and every now and then glorious were the views of the beautiful ocean, which lay calmly reposing and smiling beneath the setting sun.  “How unlike that stormy, dark, and noisy sea of but a week ago!” so said the friends to each other, as they listened to its distant musical murmur, and heard the waves break gently on the shingly beach.

Although we have called them friends, there was a considerable difference in their ages.  That tall and pleasing, though plain, girl in black, was the governess of the younger.  Her name was Emilie Schomberg.  The little rosy, dark-eyed, and merry girl, her pupil, we shall call Edith Parker.  She had scarcely numbered twelve Mays, and was at the age when primrosing and violeting have not lost their charms, and when spring is the most welcome, and the dearest of all the four seasons.  Emilie Schomberg, as her name may lead you to infer, was a German.  She spoke English, however, so well, that you would scarcely have supposed her to be a foreigner, and having resided in England for some years, had been accustomed to the frequent use of that language.  Emilie Schomberg was the daily governess of little Edith.  Little she was always called, for she was the youngest of the family, and at eleven years of age, if the truth must be told of her, was a good deal of a baby.

Several schemes of education had been tried for this same little Edith,—­schools and governesses and masters,—­but Emilie Schomberg, who now came to her for a few hours every other day, had obtained greater influence over her than any former instructor; and in addition to the German, French, and music, which she undertook to teach, she instructed Edith in a few things not really within her province, but nevertheless of some importance; of these you shall judge.  The search for primroses was not a silent search—­Edith is the first speaker.

“Yes, Emilie, but it was very provoking, after I had finished my lessons so nicely, and got done in time to walk out with you, to have mamma fancy I had a cold, when I had nothing of the kind.  I almost wish some one would turn really ill, and then she would not fancy I was so, quite so often.”

“Oh, hush, Edith dear! you are talking nonsense, and you are saying what you cannot mean.  I don’t like to hear you so pert to that kind mamma of yours, whenever she thinks it right to contradict you.”

“Emilie, I cannot help saying, and you know yourself, though you call her kind, that mamma is cross, very cross sometimes.  Yes, I know she is very fond of me and all that, but still she is cross, and it is no use denying it.  Oh, dear, I wish I was you.  You never seem to have anything to put you out.  I never see you look as if you had been crying or vexed, but I have so many many things to vex me at home.”