! Then listen, reckless woman! and remember this warning--'the way
of intruders is hard!'

"There! that ends it off with a sort of threatening dreadfulness that
ought to scare her stiff. After I've said that in a whisper to freeze
her blood, I'll turn silently from her bedside and glide noiselessly
from the room, wringing my hair and tearing my hands; no, I mean just
the other way, and if that doesn't fix her, why--I'll have to go over
it all again, of course, so I won't forget. Perhaps it would be a good
idea to write it down and learn it off by heart."

The idea in fact recommended itself so thoroughly to her that she
followed her own suggestion without further delay and wrote off the
entire harangue at once, making it, if possible, even more eloquent and
harrowing than it had been in the original. It seemed a very long,
wearisome task, to commit it all to memory, but she did not grudge the
trouble. She had never attempted anything that looked like study with
so much willingness. The afternoon slipped away like a dream, and as
soon as dinner was over she set to work again, and by bed-time had the
thing pretty well under control. Whenever she halted or stumbled she
went over it all again with the most patient perseverance.

"I suppose if I had stuck to things at school like this I'd have been
at the head of the class," she said to herself with a whimsical sense
of her own perversity.

Delia was completely nonplused. She could not imagine what "that child
was up to." There were no evidences anywhere of the means she was
going to employ in the governess' initiation. Her room was in perfect
order, and in Nan's own chamber nothing was unusually amiss. She got
no satisfaction from the girl herself, who kept her lips tightly
closed, except when she was mumbling over her harangue. It was
terribly perplexing--and ominous.

"Good land!" thought Delia in real anxiety, "I only hope she ain't
going to do anything too dreadful. I declare, if it weren't that I'm
so soft where Nannie is concerned I'd say I'd be glad that some one's
coming who may be up to managin' her. I'm free to confess I ain't. If
only her mother had lived! Or, if only my dear Miss Belle hadn't gone
off to the ends of the earth--! Miss Belle could have managed her! No
one could resist Miss Belle, bless her! Ah, dear me, dear me! It's
fifteen years, and to think, I'll never see her face again!"

CHAPTER IV

THE GOVERNESS

The mor