Miss Chetwynd, simpering momentarily, came forward with that self-conscious, slightly histrionic air, which is one of the penalties of pedagogy.  She lived under the eyes of her pupils.  Her life was one ceaseless effort to avoid doing anything which might influence her charges for evil or shock the natural sensitiveness of their parents.  She had to wind her earthly way through a forest of the most delicate susceptibilities—­fern-fronds that stretched across the path, and that she must not even accidentally disturb with her skirt as she passed.  No wonder she walked mincingly!  No wonder she had a habit of keeping her elbows close to her sides, and drawing her mantle tight in the streets!  Her prospectus talked about ’a sound and religious course of training,’ ’study embracing the usual branches of English, with music by a talented master, drawing, dancing, and calisthenics.’  Also ’needlework plain and ornamental;’ also ‘moral influence;’ and finally about terms, ’which are very moderate, and every particular, with references to parents and others, furnished on application.’ (Sometimes, too, without application.) As an illustration of the delicacy of fern-fronds, that single word ‘dancing’ had nearly lost her Constance and Sophia seven years before!

She was a pinched virgin, aged forty, and not ‘well off;’ in her family the gift of success had been monopolized by her elder sister.  For these characteristics Mrs. Baines, as a matron in easy circumstances, pitied Miss Chetwynd.  On the other hand, Miss Chetwynd could choose ground from which to look down upon Mrs. Baines, who after all was in trade.  Miss Chetwynd had no trace of the local accent; she spoke with a southern refinement which the Five Towns, while making fun of it, envied.  All her O’s had a genteel leaning towards ‘ow,’ as ritualism leans towards Romanism.  And she was the fount of etiquette, a wonder of correctness; in the eyes of her pupils’ parents not so much ‘a perfect lady’ as ’a perfect lady.’  So that it was an extremely nice question whether, upon the whole, Mrs. Baines secretly condescended to Miss Chetwynd or Miss Chetwynd to Mrs. Baines.  Perhaps Mrs. Baines, by virtue of her wifehood, carried the day.

Miss Chetwynd, carefully and precisely seated, opened the conversation by explaining that even if Mrs. Baines had not written she should have called in any case, as she made a practice of calling at the home of her pupils in vacation time:  which was true.  Mrs. Baines, it should be stated, had on Friday afternoon sent to Miss Chetwynd one of her most luxurious notes—­lavender-coloured paper with scalloped edges, the selectest mode of the day—­to announce, in her Italian hand, that Constance and Sophia would both leave school at the end of the next term, and giving reasons in regard to Sophia.

Before the visitor had got very far, Maggie came in with a lacquered tea-caddy and the silver teapot and a silver spoon on a lacquered tray.  Mrs. Baines, while continuing to talk, chose a key from her bunch, unlocked the tea-caddy, and transferred four teaspoonfuls of tea from it to the teapot and relocked the caddy.