ible reference was there to
these fine things in poor Lionel's stable-stamped composition? When she
came in this evening and saw his small sons making competitive noises in
their mugs (Miss Steet checked this impropriety on her entrance) she
asked herself what _they_ would have to show twenty years later for the
frame that made them just then a picture. Would they be wonderfully ripe
and noble, the perfection of human culture? The contrast was before her
again, the sense of the same curious duplicity (in the literal meaning
of the word) that she had felt at Plash--the way the genius of such an
old house was all peace and decorum and the spirit that prevailed there,
outside of the schoolroom, was contentious and impure. She had often
been struck with it before--with that perfection of machinery which can
still at certain times make English life go on of itself with a stately
rhythm long after there is corruption within it.

She had half a purpose of asking Miss Steet to dine with her that
evening downstairs, so absurd did it seem to her that two young women
who had so much in common (enough at least for that) should sit feeding
alone at opposite ends of the big empty house, melancholy on such a
night. She would not have cared just now whether Selina did think such a
course familiar: she indulged sometimes in a kind of angry humility,
placing herself near to those who were laborious and sordid. But when
she observed how much cold meat the governess had already consumed she
felt that it would be a vain form to propose to her another repast. She
sat down with her and presently, in the firelight, the two children had
placed themselves in position for a story. They were dressed like the
mariners of England and they smelt of the ablutions to which they had
been condemned before tea and the odour of which was but partly overlaid
by that of bread and butter. Scratch wanted an old story and Parson a
new, and they exchanged from side to side a good many powerful
arguments. While they were so engaged Miss Steet narrated at her
visitor's invitation the walk she had taken with them and revealed that
she had been thinking for a long time of asking Mrs. Berrington--if she
only had an opportunity--whether she should approve of her giving them a
few elementary notions of botany. But the opportunity had not come--she
had had the idea for a long time past. She was rather fond of the study
herself; she had gone into it a little--she seemed t