Once more she endeavoured to fix the girl’s thoughts on the work in hand, and by steady persistence conquered at length some semblance of attention.  But an hour proved the utmost limit of Jessie’s patience, then her tongue got its way again, and the inevitable subjects were resumed.  She talked of the ‘gentlemen’ whose acquaintance, in a greater or less degree, she had made at the seaside; described their manoeuvres to obtain private interviews with her, repeated jokes of their invention, specified her favourites, all at headlong speed of disjointed narrative.  Emily sat beneath the infliction, feeling that to go through this on alternate days for some weeks would be beyond her power.  She would not rise and depart, for a gathering warmth within encouraged her to await a moment when speech would come to her aid.  It did so at length; her thought found words almost involuntarily.

’Jessie, I’m afraid we shall not do much good if we always spend our mornings like this!’

‘Oh, but I thought we’d done enough for to-day.’

’Perhaps so, but—­What I want to say is this.  Will you, as a kindness to me, forget these subjects when we are together?  I don’t mind what else you talk about, but stories of this kind make me fidgety; I feel as if I should be obliged to get up and run away.’

’Do you really mean it?  You don’t like me to talk about gentlemen?  What a queer girl you are, Emily!  Why, you’re not settling down to be an old maid at your age, are you?’

‘We’ll say so; perhaps that explains it.’

’Well, that’s queer.  I can’t see, myself, what else there is to talk about.  Grammar’s all very well when we’re children, but it seems to me that what a grown-up girl has to do is to look out for a husband.  How you can be satisfied with books’—­the infinite contempt she put into the word!—­’is more than I can make out.’

’But you will do what I ask, as a kindness?  I am in earnest; I shall be afraid of seeing you if you can’t help talking of such things.’

Jessie laughed extravagantly; such a state of mind was to her comical beyond expression.

’You are a queer one!  Of course I’ll do as you wish; you shan’t hear me mention a single gentleman’s name, and I’ll tell all the others to be careful whenever you come.’

Emily averted her face; it was reddened with annoyance at the thought of being discussed in this way by all the Cartwright household.

‘You can do that if you like,’ she said coldly, ’though it’s no part of my wish.  I spoke of the hours when we are together for study.’

‘Very well, I won’t say anything,’ replied the girl, who was good-natured enough beneath all her vulgarities.  ’And now what shall we do till dinner-time?’

‘I must make the best of my way home.’

’Oh, nonsense!  Why, you’re going to have dinner with us; of course that was understood.’