ly she could really
begin now, knowing what she wanted.... She would talk now with those
teachers.... Isn't it all wonderful! Aren't things wonderful! Tell me
some more.... She felt sure that if she could go back, things would get
clear. She would talk and think and understand.... She did not linger
over that. It threatened a storm whose results would be visible. She
wondered what the other girls were doing--Lilla? She had heard nothing
of her since that last term. She would write to her one day, perhaps.
Perhaps not.... She would have to tell her that she was a governess.
Lilla would think that very funny and would not care for her now that
she was so old and worried....

5

Woven through her retrospective appreciations came a doubt. She wondered
whether, after all, her school had been right. Whether it ought to have
treated them all so seriously. If she had gone to the other school she
was sure she would never have heard of the Aesthetic Movement or felt
troubled about the state of Ireland and India. Perhaps she would have
grown up a Churchwoman... and "ladylike." Never.

She could only think that somehow she must be "different"; that a
sprinkling of the girls collected in that school were different, too.
The school she decided was new--modern--Ruskin. Most of the girls
perhaps had not been affected by it. But some had. She had. The thought
stirred her. She had. It was mysterious. Was it the school or herself?
Herself to begin with. If she had been brought up differently, it could
not, she felt sure, have made her very different--for long--nor taught
her to be affable--to smile that smile she hated so. The school had
done something to her. It had not gone against the things she found in
herself. She wondered once or twice during these early weeks what she
would have been like if she had been brought up with these German girls.
What they were going to do with their lives was only too plain. All but
Emma, she had been astounded to discover, had already a complete outfit
of house-linen to which they were now adding fine embroideries and
laces. All could cook. Minna had startled her one day by exclaiming
with lit face, "Ach, ich koche so _schrecklich_ gern!" Oh, I am so
frightfully fond of cooking.... And they were placid and serene, secure
in a kind of security Miriam had never met before. They did not seem to
be in the least afraid of the future. She envied that. Their eyes and
their hands were serene.... They