CHAPTER VII

July 1st.

She has been now over five weeks under my roof, and I have put off the evil day of explaining her to Judith; and Judith returns to-morrow.

I know it is odd for a philosophic bachelor to maintain in his establishment a young and detached female of prepossessing appearance.  For the oddity I care not two pins. Io son’ io.  But the question that exercises me occasionally is:  In what category are my relations with Carlotta to be classified?  I do not regard her as a daughter; still less as a sister:  not even as a deceased wife’s sister.  For a secretary she is too abysmally ignorant, too grotesquely incapable.  What she knows would be made to kick the beam against the erudition of a guinea-pig.  Yet she must be classified somehow.  I must allude to her as something.  At present she fills the place in the house of a pretty (and expensive) Persian cat; and like a cat she has made herself serenely at home.

A governess, a fat-checked girl, who I am afraid takes too humorous a view of the position, comes of mornings to instruct Carlotta in the rudiments of education.  When engaging Miss Griggs, I told her she must be patient, firm and, above all, strong-minded.  She replied that she made a professional specialty of these qualities, one of her present pupils being a young lady of the Alhambra ballet who desires the particular shade of cultivation that will match a new brougham.  She teaches Carlotta to spell, to hold a knife and fork, and corrects such erroneous opinions as that the sky is an inverted bowl over a nice flat earth, and that the sun, moon, and stars are a sort of electric light installation, put into the cosmos to illuminate Alexandretta and the Regent’s Park.  Her religious instruction I myself shall attend to, when she is sufficiently advanced to understand my teaching.  At present she is a Mohammedan, if she is anything, and believes firmly in Allah.  I consider that a working Theism is quite enough for a young woman in her position to go on with.  In the afternoon she walks out with Antoinette.  Once she stole forth by herself, enjoyed herself hugely for a short time, got lost, and was brought back thoroughly frightened by a policeman.  I wonder what the policeman thought of her?  The rest of the day she looks at picture-books and works embroidery.  She is making an elaborate bed-spread which will give her harmless occupation for a couple of years.

For an hour every evening, when I am at home, she comes into the drawing-room and drinks coffee with me and listens to my improving conversation.  I take this opportunity to rebuke her for faults committed during the day, or to commend her for especial good behaviour.  I also supplement the instruction in things in general that is given her by the excellent Miss Griggs.  Oddly enough I am beginning to look forward to these evening hours.  She is so docile,