No doubt what I have to write will not be very palatable to you; but it is time you gave up pleasuring and began to meet the responsibilities of life.  Your father is lazier if anything, and drinks more than ever.  He has got himself into great debt and difficulties, and would have been sold off again but for Peter M’Swat.  You will remember Peter M’Swat?  Well, he has been good enough to lend your father 500 pounds at 4 per cent, which means 20 pounds per year interest.  Your father would have no more idea of meeting this amount than a cat would have.  But now I am coming to the part of the matter which concerns you.  Out of friendship to your father, Mr M’Swat is good enough to accept your services as governess to his children, in lieu of interest on the money.  I have told him you will be in Yarnung In Friday the 8th of January 1897, where he will meet you.  Be careful to remember the date.  I am sorry I could not give you more notice; but he wants his children to commence school as soon as possible, and he deserves every consideration in the matter.  Perhaps you will not find it as pleasant as Caddagat; but he has been very good, and offers you a fair number of holidays, and what he will give you is equal to 20 pounds.  That is a lot in these times, when he could easily get so many better girls than you are in every way for half the money, and make your father pay the interest, and thereby be 10 pounds in pocket.  You will have to help Mrs M’Swat with the work and sewing; but that will do you good, and I hope you will try hard to give every satisfaction.  I have also written to your grandmother.

That letter wiped away ever vestige of my appetite for the dainties before me.  M’Swat’s!  Send—­me—­to M’Swat’s!  I could not believe it!  It must be a nightmare!  M’Swat’s!

Certainly, I had never been there; but all those who had gave graphic descriptions of the total ignorance of Mrs M’Swat.  Why, the place was quite tabooed on account of its squalor and dirt!

The steel of my mother’s letter entered my soul.  Why had she not expressed a little regret at the thing she was imposing on me?  Instead, there was a note of satisfaction running through her letter that she was able to put an end to my pleasant life at Caddagat.  She always seemed to grudge me any pleasure.  I bitterly put it down as accruing from the curse of ugliness, as, when mentioning Gertie, it was ever, “I have let Gertie go to such and such an entertainment.  We could not very well afford it, but the poor little girl does not have many pleasures for her years.”  I was smaller than Gertie, and only eleven months older; but to me it was “You must think of something besides pleasure.”

The lot of ugly girls is not joyful, and they must be possessed of natures very absurdly sanguine indeed ever to hope for any enjoyment in life.

It was cruel, base, horrible of my mother to send me to M’Swat’s.  I would not go—­not for 50 pounds a day!  I would not go!  I would not! not for any consideration.