t
people--thought much the same as we did of Miss Grantley. The truth was,
nobody thought of her except with kindly feelings, because everybody
liked her. She had gone through much trouble. Her father, who had been a
wealthy squire, lost all his money in buying shares in mines, or
something of that sort, and died a poor man. His wife had been dead for
years, so that Miss Grantley was left an orphan and with few relations
except one brother, who had gone abroad to seek his fortune, but without
finding it, I suppose, since Miss Grantley, after passing examinations
and being a teacher in a great school in London, came down to Barton
Vale to be our governess.

Barton Vale is a pretty, quiet, secluded place. It is not exactly a
village, but is a suburb of a large town, only the town is nearly two
miles away, so that the Barton Vale people heard very little of the
factory people, and didn't smell the smoke from the tanneries and the
alkali works at Barton-on-the-Lees. In fact most of the principal people
of the town had come to live about the vale. The vicar, and the
principal manufacturers, the Jorrings, who were county people, and Mr.
Belfort the banker, and Mrs. Durand, and the Selways, and old Dr.
Speight, and the Norburys, had handsome houses and kept their carriages.
Even the Barton doctor, Mr. Torridge, was more in the vale than in the
town; and the solicitor had a pretty little villa next door to the
old-fashioned house that Miss Grantley had taken to open a school in.

Most of these folks knew Miss Grantley; and many of them loved her as
much as her girls did, for some of the girls belonged to the families I
have mentioned. They came to her school as daily pupils instead of being
sent to the cathedral town to live away from home; and that was one
reason that she got on so well, for the dear old vicar and his wife had
known her parents, and would have liked her to make the vicarage her
home. The banker's married daughter, Mrs. Norbury, had been a
schoolfellow of Miss Grantley, and called her "dear Bessie" when they
met, and wanted to take lessons of her in French and German; because
Miss Grantley had studied abroad, and spoke both these languages very
well.

It was because so many people there and in the town and in London, knew
her, that she was able to take the old house which was once the
maltster's, and have it done up nicely, and the great long room that had
been the front office and sample-room turned into a