‘Why, it’s just as far for you to come here,’ exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright.  ’If you’re good enough to teach her—­great, lazy thing that she is!—­the least she can do is to save you all the trouble she can.’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ observed Jessie.  ’Why shouldn’t we have lessons in the garden?’

’That’s just as bad.  Emily ’ll have the same distance to walk.  Don’t hear of it, Emily; you make her come to Banbrigg!’

‘I don’t in the least mind the walk,’ Emily said.  ’Perhaps we might take it in turns, one lesson in the garden and the next at Banbrigg.’

After ten minutes’ vociferous discussion, during which Emily held her peace, this plan was eventually agreed upon.

Jessie ran upstairs to prepare herself to go forth.

‘Now don’t you let her waste your time, Emily,’ said Mrs. Cartwright, in the girl’s absence.  ’If you see she’s doing no good, just give it up.  I don’t half like the thought of making you drudge in this way in your holidays.  I’m sure it’s very kind of you to have offered to do it, and it’s certain she’ll mind you more than she would any one else.  She doesn’t care a scrap for all I say to her, though she knows well enough it’s as much as her father can do to keep things going at all.  There never was such bad times in my recollection!  How are things in London?  Did you hear much complaint?’

Emily found it hard to resist a smile at the thought of Mr. Athel or any of those belonging to him indulging in complaints of this nature.

‘And what sort of people are they you’ve got with this time?’ the other went on to ask.  ‘Do they treat you well?’

‘Very well indeed.’

It would have been difficult for a stranger, comparing Emily, her tone and bearing, with the members of the Cartwright family, to believe that she came of the same class and had lived through her girlhood under precisely similar conditions.  So marked a difference could not but impress even the Cartwrights themselves; the girls did not behave with entire freedom in her presence, and influences to which they were anything but readily susceptible were apparent in the tone they adopted in addressing her.  In spite of themselves, they bowed to a superiority but vaguely understood.  Jessie, perhaps, exhibited less of this instinctive reverence than the others, although, in point of fact, her endowments were decidedly above those of her sisters; the reason being, no doubt, that acknowledged precedence in intellect had fostered in her the worst kind of self-confidence.  The girl was intolerably conceited.  Emily almost disliked her; she would have found it a more agreeable task to endeavour to teach any one of the more stupid sisters.  It was in the certainty of a couple of hours’ moral suffering that she left the house with Jessie.