[Illustration:  Baby, dear!]

Well, it does seem very shocking, and there is no denying that, for a whole month, we did not often see the inside of a book.  Yet, I had learnt to read, and had been in the habit of learning to spell and to count every day of my life at home.  I don’t quite know how it came about that we were not all of us a very untamed set after a month’s idleness at the Park.  Perhaps, it was a good thing for us that grandmamma was what she was.  The very perfection of tender kindness we all felt her, and yet there was a certain dignity about her, that made it a simple impossibility to be rough or rude before her.  And on the whole we were a great deal with her.  When not with her, we were supposed to be picking up a great deal of French from my cousin’s Swiss nurse.  And so, in our way, we did, although I think Susette learned English a great deal faster than we learned French.  Yet, when we wished to coax her, the French words came fast enough, such as they were.

But I am afraid grandmamma did not think that we were learning quite enough, for one day she called Lottie and me, and told us that she had just seen such a nice young lady, and that she had promised to come and be our governess.  What an excitement this news caused us all!  How we talked it over all day long.  We had many different ideas as to what she was to be like; in fact, the elder boys made pictures of her, which, as it turned out, were anything but good portraits.

How we did look at her that first evening!  She was very young, very fair and in deep mourning.  That is my earliest impression of her.  We had a kind of unconfessed idea that she did not take half pains enough to make us like her.  She did not seem to care whether we did or not—­hardly, I fancy, to think about the matter.  It was just the very end of April, almost the bright May-time, and grandmamma went round the garden with her, Lottie and I making our remarks from a distance.  I think we were a little surprised to see our new governess so much at her ease, laughing merrily and talking away to grandmamma, just as if there were no little critics taking note of all.  By and by, she came in and sat down in “the schoolroom”—­such a new word that seemed!—­to write a letter.  Lottie and I pretended to be very busy with our dolls in one corner, but we were keeping up our watch, and every now and then we met her eye with a merry twinkle in it, looking greatly amused at us.

“She looks so young, only a girl! she will never be able to manage us, Jane says,” Lottie remarked very softly to me; “but then, I daresay, she can be cross enough when she likes, governesses always are!”

All of a sudden, a merry laugh startled us both, and in another minute Lottie found herself flat on the floor, being tickled and kissed and laughed over all at once.  I don’t think she quite liked it, though she couldn’t help laughing, too, but her cheeks were very red, when Miss Grant raised her own head.  She kept Lottie flat on her back, and looked down at her, the most thorough amusement all over her face.