ompanions as they
exchanged small, loud remarks. She always sighed when Laura came in--it
was her way of expressing appreciation of the visit--and she was the one
person whom the girl frequently saw who seemed to her more unhappy than
herself. But Laura envied her--she thought her position had more dignity
than that of her employer's dependent sister. Miss Steet had related her
life to the children's pretty young aunt and this personage knew that
though it had had painful elements nothing so disagreeable had ever
befallen her or was likely to befall her as the odious possibility of
her sister's making a scandal. She had two sisters (Laura knew all about
them) and one of them was married to a clergyman in Staffordshire (a
very ugly part) and had seven children and four hundred a year; while
the other, the eldest, was enormously stout and filled (it was a good
deal of a squeeze) a position as matron in an orphanage at Liverpool.
Neither of them seemed destined to go into the English divorce-court,
and such a circumstance on the part of one's near relations struck
Laura as in itself almost sufficient to constitute happiness. Miss Steet
never lived in a state of nervous anxiety--everything about her was
respectable. She made the girl almost angry sometimes, by her drooping,
martyr-like air: Laura was near breaking out at her with, 'Dear me, what
have you got to complain of? Don't you earn your living like an honest
girl and are you obliged to see things going on about you that you
hate?'

But she could not say things like that to her, because she had promised
Selina, who made a great point of this, that she would never be too
familiar with her. Selina was not without her ideas of decorum--very far
from it indeed; only she erected them in such queer places. She was not
familiar with her children's governess; she was not even familiar with
the children themselves. That was why after all it was impossible to
address much of a remonstrance to Miss Steet when she sat as if she were
tied to the stake and the fagots were being lighted. If martyrs in this
situation had tea and cold meat served them they would strikingly have
resembled the provoking young woman in the schoolroom at Mellows. Laura
could not have denied that it was natural she should have liked it
better if Mrs. Berrington would _sometimes_ just look in and give a sign
that she was pleased with her system; but poor Miss Steet only knew by
the servants or by Laura whet