Miss Blake's Mistake

2

Miss Blake’s Mistake

    “Will it answer, though, my dear?” said Mrs Warrenby anxiously to her sister.

    Miss Blake sighed. “I cannot tell, to say truth, Amelia. The young woman appears to have all the necessary qualifications... Well, the papa was an Oxford professor,” she reminded her.

    “Well, yes. I did not mean that so much, as—as taking the younger girl on as a pupil, while the older is to teach,” she murmured. The widowed Mrs Warrenby had a financial interest in the school tor young ladies which her sister had run most capably these past fifteen years, but she did not as a rule interfere in any way with the day-to-day business of the establishment. But Miss Blake had asked her opinion in this particular matter.

    Naomi Blake’s fine brow clouded over and she said: “If you are implying that any pupil of mine will be both so ill-mannered and so heartless as to discriminate against the girl for being related to one of the mistresses—”

    “It’s just that—well, girls are sometimes so heedless!” she said hastily.

    “That is very true,” agreed Miss Blake grimly. “Well, I shall speak to them all before the Ogilvies arrive.”

    “l think it might be best, dearest,” she said faintly.

    Miss Blake swallowed a sigh. “Yes. –Why is it that women are born cats?” she added impatiently.

    The good-natured Mrs Warrenby bit her lip.

    “Yourself being the exception, my love!” added Miss Blake with a sudden laugh, pressing her hand. “Shall I ring for tea?”

    Mrs Warrenby agreeing she would like tea, Miss Blake duly rang, and added drily, when Pointer had come and gone: “Possibly l am being unjust in blaming Nature. It may be only their upbringing that steers the female of the human species in the feline way!”

    “Dearest, I am sure if—If anyone can get them out of it,” faltered her sister, “it is you. So many of the parents have expressed such an appreciation of the improvement you have wrought in their daughters’ general conduct, you know!”

    “Mm, well, I do my best,” said Miss Blake ruefully, with what, if she had not been such a very proper and dignified person, one would have sworn was a grin upon her handsome and intelligent countenance. “But one is fighting against the grain, my love!”

    “Dearest Naomi, you do exaggerate,” murmured her sister. “l am sure that not all of the girls—”

    “Not dear little Bunch Ainsley, no; and her cousin Floss Maddern is nigh as sensible and—and uncattish,” she said with a twinkle, “as she, I’m glad to say.”

    “And—and surely, Pretty Hallam—”

    “No,” said Miss Blake with a little sigh. “You are thinking of the older sister, but it is two years now since she left. Pretty Hallam is—I would say the silliest, but there is nothing to choose between any of this latest lot we have in the senior class—let us say, one of the silliest girls we have had in the school for a long time. Empty-headed. And the worst of it is she has quite a strong character: the weaker ones tend to follow her lead. I can only be glad she and Felicity Tarlington and their coterie are leaving us this term.”

    Mrs Warrenby agreed.

    There was a short pause while Pointer brought in the tea, and then Mrs Warrenby ventured: “How old is Miss Ogilvie’s sister, Naomi?”

    “Oh, did I not say?” Miss Blake handed her a cup. “She is already turned seventeen, and normally I would hesitate to take on a girl of that age without being very sure of her background and temperament: the character is already formed, of course.” She sighed. “But in this instance—well, Lady Naseby desired it most particularly and recommended the family so highly, and of course she has always been one of our most valued patronesses...”

    “Yes, of course!” agreed Mrs Warrenby quickly, not pointing out the fact that, although the Hallam girls were certainly Naseby connections, Lady Naseby’s own granddaughters were being educated at home. “Well, I dare say it will answer well enough, my dear. And since you are expanding the school another teacher versed in mathematics and geography will not come amiss!”

    “No. And let us hope she is more capable of maintaining discipline than Miss Worrington,” said Miss Blake with a sigh. “I have had to give up awarding her the middle school: girls of thirteen to fifteen are entirely beyond her capacity to handle! Did I tell you, one day last month it struck me on passing that the middle-school classroom was extraordinarily silent for a mathematics period, and when I looked in upon them, there was Floss Maddern at the blackboard testing them upon their algebra, and Miss Worrington nowhere to be seen!”

    “Indeed,” agreed her sister with a smile. “You said she was laid down upon her bed with the headache.”

    “Which the middle class had given her—quite! And it isn’t even as if Floss’s own mathematics were up to scratch!” added Miss Blake, suddenly laughing very much.

    “It sounds as if she is greatly improved,” said Mrs Warrenby, eating cake.

    “Very much so: I am very pleased with her indeed,” owned her headmistress. “She should really be going up to the senior class next term, but I think I may hold her back, just until we see whether Miss Ogilvie’s discipline is more effective than poor Miss Worrington’s.”

    “But... Well, how will Miss Worrington handle the senior class, then, Naomi? And will the girl not feel it, being held back?”

    “Well, no, Floss won’t feel it,” said Miss Blake with a twinkle, taking a piece of cake, “for I intend discussing the matter quite frankly with her! And once we are rid of Pretty Hallam and Felicity Tarlington, the senior class will not pose so much of a problem, I’m glad to say.”

    “Of course. –So Miss Ogilvie’s sister is seventeen: well, she will not be upon your hands tor very long, then.”

    “No, that’s true.”

    Mrs Warrenby drank tea. “Poor little things,” she murmured.

    Her sister looked at her affectionately. She had rather thought that was how the Ogilvie girls’ story might strike Amelia. “Indeed,” she agreed. “Even though l naturally wished to do Lady Naseby a favour I might have hesitated, had they not been orphaned. And as you say, we may expect to have the younger girl for a year, at the most. And I did make it clear to Lady Naseby that if Miss Ogilvie does not suit l could not contemplate keeping her on after that period.”

    “No... What will the sister do after that?” she quavered.

    Miss Blake gave a very slight shrug. “What do any of our girls do, my dear? Find a husband, suitable or unsuitable, and settle down to raising a family of their own.”

    “Yes, but— Well, have they any relatives, dearest? Or—or any portion’

    Her sister eyed her drily at this addendum but said: “They do have relatives, yes. There is an Ogilvie aunt who is married to a clergyman: they will go to her for their holidays, but she has a hopeful family of her own and l do not think the husband’s stipend can readily be expanded to support two extra mouths. And there is an old great-uncle, a bachelor or perhaps a widower, l did not quite gather his precise status, but at all events he appears to live alone on the outskirts of Oxford, and he is prepared to have the younger girl live with him once her schooling is finished.”

    “But—but that is hardly…” The good-natured Mrs Warrenby’s voice trailed off.

    “Hardly a setting conducive to the catching of husbands? Well, no, not at first sight. But perhaps she will have the nous to nab an Oxford undergraduate.”

    “It is hardly a jesting matter, Naomi.”

    “I’m sorry, my love. But once a girl is out of my hands, what can I do?”

    Mrs Warrenby chewed her lip. “No, well... But a crusty old great-uncle?”

    “We don’t know that he is crusty,” she said with a twinkle in her fine grey eye.

    Mrs Warrenby missed the twinkle. She sighed. “No… Oh, dear.”

    As not infrequently happened when any slight problem arose at Miss Blake’s academy for young ladles, its headmistress had talked herself into a better frame of mind during the chat to her mild-mannered sister. “Have another piece of cake, my love. At the least, it will be a change for us, this coming school year!”

    “A change indeed!” she cried. “Two bluestocking daughters of an Oxford professor?”

    Smiling a little, Miss Blake handed cake. “We must try to be optimistic. And i cannot but feel that a school which has got through several years of Pretty Hallam and Felicity Tarlington and emerged relatively unscathed will be able to handle these Ogilvies for a year. However odd they may be!”

    Mrs Warrenby smiled a little reluctantly. “I am glad to see you taking an optimistic tone, dearest. –Would the aunt be able to bring the younger one out, do you suppose?”

    Miss Blake had herself taken another piece of cake. Well though she knew her sister, she choked slightly over it. Swallowing, she managed to say: “Bring her out? I really have no notion, Amelia. But she has girls of her own, so I suppose she may well make a push to take her to the occasional assembly, and so forth.”

    “Good. Where does she live, my love?”

    “Er, I am not very sure of the exact address...” She glanced at her sister’s face and, suppressing a sigh, got up and looked through her neat files. “Lower Beighnham,” she reported.

    “Lower Beighnham, my dear? But good gracious, surely that is where the Parker girls came from?” she cried.

    Miss Blake sat down again, looking disconcerted. “Er—you are right, Amelia.”

    “And was not the papa of the clever one the Vicar?” she cried.

    “So he was; I did not make the connection. It must be the same family, I think.”

    Mrs Warrenby nodded, beaming.

    “Dearest, the money was not on the mamma’s side,” she murmured.

    Mrs Warrenby’s open face fell. “Oh. No, of course: it was the cousin’s papa, was it not?”

    “Yes. And although Dimity and Henrietta Parker are to be brought out, it will not be their mother who does so, but Fliss Tarlington’s mamma.”

    “Oh, yes; I had forgot they are distant cousins! –My dear, how will that answer? Dimity Parker and little Fliss used to fight like cat and dog!” she reminded her.

    “Mm. Well, Felicity is older now, Amelia: we must hope that she will have the sense to avoid any confrontation.”

    “I am sure they both will, indeed.” Mrs Warrenby sat back and finished her cake happily. “So when do you plan to see Miss Ogilvie, Naomi?”

    Miss Blake jumped slightly. “Oh, I shall leave this coming Wednesday: l have written to let Miss Ogilvie know which day to expect me.”

    Mrs Warrenby nodded happily. She talked the matter over at length and finally decided that she should accompany her sister: Naomi could scarcely stay at an hotel alone! Miss Blake had not proposed doing so, she had proposed taking her maid with her, but she acquiesced in her sister’s suggestion, reflecting that it might be possible to send Amelia off on a tour of whatever emporia Oxford offered for the delight of its female population, whilst she herself visited the colleges and the libraries. Since afternoon school would now be very nearly over, she further agreed that her niece Violet Warrenby might be sent for in order that she might travel home with her mamma in the barouche.

    “No, I thought you didn’t know,” said Bunch Ainsley complacently to her cousin Floss Maddern later that day. “Old Blakey doesn’t go off to vet girls as a matter of course, does she? She makes their parents bring them here. So when she had Mrs Warrenby to tea, I thought it might be worth listening to!”

    Floss glanced round cautiously but there was no-one near enough to overhear them. “You could have suffocated in that cupboard, Bunch!”

    Bunch looked superior. “I’ve used it lots of times. So has Corky.”

    Miss Belinda Corcoran, the third in the unholy trio on the small sofa in the boarders’ parlour, nodded hard.

    “Yes, but both of you together—!” hissed Floss.

    “It’s got a keyhole, and there’s plenty of space under the door, imbecile,” said Bunch loftily.

    Corky nodded hard again.

    Floss sighed. “I would not have had the daring, even at your age,” she admitted on an envious note. “And if Old Blakey ever catches you it’ll be the sack, for sure! Especially after that time you ran away, Bunch,” she reminded her cousin.

    “Pooh. I was only ten then, she wouldn’t hold that against me!”

    Floss snorted.

    “Well, there is no fear of it, no-one would look inside that cupboard,” explained Corky in a lowered voice: “because you can’t tell it connects to O.B.’s sitting-room from the outside. I mean, you have to take the panel in the ceiling out and climb up, don’t you, Bunch?”

    “Yes: there’s a funny sort of space, I think it’s where the stairs go up. Anyway, you get in there and then you can hear everything that O.B.’s saying!”

    Floss nodded weakly. “How did you figure it out, Bunch?”

    Bunch shrugged. “It looked wrong, where the stairs turn, and that made me take a second look at the cupboard.”

    Floss sighed. “I wish I’d known about it when we started here.”

    “You’d only’ve heard Old Blakey going on about how rotten our spelling was!” said Bunch with a smothered giggle.

    “Well, maybe... l wouldn’t mind hearing her true opinion of those idiots in the senior class, though!” she said on a vicious note.

    Corky nodded emphatically.

    Bunch made a face. “Who cares? Well, she did say something about Fliss Tarlington and Pretty Hallam...” She wrinkled her brow. “Got it!” She reported Miss Blake’s remarks. Floss promptly collapsed in giggles.

    After Miss Worrington had come over to their sofa, looked vaguely at the sewing in which none of them had set a stitch for the last fifteen minutes, approved vaguely of it, and drifted off again, Floss prompted hopefully: “What else?

    “Um... that was all, really, wasn’t it, Bunch?” said Corky. “Um—well... What is a bluestocking, Floss?”

    Fortunately Floss was able to explain.

    “Ugh,” said Bunch glumly.

    “With any luck she’ll be as hopeless as Miss Worry-Tongue,” said Corky optimistically.

    At this, some might have said somewhat belated point, Floss remembered that she herself was no longer twelve years of age. She returned with some dignity: “Don’t call her that, Corky. You girls are very unkind to her. And she does know her subject: she’s very clever.”

    “She must be a bluestocking, too, then!” said Bunch pleasedly.

    Floss wasn’t too sure of her ground. She got up hurriedly. “At all events, you should make an effort to behave when she tells you to.” She went off, looking severe.

    Bunch made a face. “She’s getting old,” she reported.

    Corky agreed glumly. She looked at her sewing. It was horrible. Then she looked at Bunch’s. It was much worse. Cheering up, she said: “We could make her an apple-pie bed!”

    “We did that last week.”

    “Not Miss Worry-longue: this bluestocking one!”

    “Oh. Ye-es... I could find a slow-worm to put in it!” volunteered Bunch.

    Corky’s face lit up; then it fell. “No: everyone would know it was you, Bunch: you’re the only girl in the school that doesn’t mind handling them.”

    “Oh, damnation,” said Bunch.

    Corky gulped. That was almost a sackable offence, at Miss Blake’s.

    Bunch sighed. “Sewing’s so boring... It was good being in the cupboard.”

    “Yes,” agreed Corky glumly.

    There was a short silence.

    “This Miss Bluestocking will be as boring as the others. I wish I was not a girl! Being a girl is so boring!” said Bunch violently.

    Corky sighed. “Yes.”

    More silence.

    “Are you going home at Easter?” asked Corky dully.

    Bunch sighed heavily. She lived with her oldest brother and his wife and usually did go home for all of the school’s holidays. “Not this year: Christa is expecting to be confined and Paul thought I should be better to go Amabel’s.”

    “That won’t be too bad, will it?”

    “Imbecile! She’s the soppy one. –In Tunbridge Wells,” she added, making an awful face.”

    “Oh, help!” cried Corky sympathetically. “I was getting her mixed up with your Cousin Hildy,” she explained.

    “She’s nice; but she’s expecting to be confined round about Easter, too!”

    “Oh, dear,” said Corky. She hesitated. Bunch’s eldest sister was very grand indeed. “Um—what about your sister?” she ventured in a sort of squawk.

    Bunch grimaced.

    “Don’t tell me she’s expecting to be confined, too!”

    “Not this time, no. –If I was her I’d stop now, twins is enough,” said Bunch—she was herself a twin.

    Corky nodded fervently.

    “No: her and Giles,” continued Bunch, scowling horribly—Corky swallowed: she couldn’t imagine her mother ever letting her call a grown-up brother-in-law by his first name even if he wasn’t, oh, help, a marquis—“are going up to stupid, rotten London!”

    “Ssh!” hissed Corky, but it didn’t matter: over in the window-seat Pretty Hallam and her set were squealing and giggling and the noise was more than enough to cover anything the two of them might produce.

    “And Giles says the air of Tunbridge Wells will be better for me than that of London,” finished Bunch gloomily.

    Corky sighed. Her relatives said that sort of thing, too.

    There was a short, glum pause.

    “And in any case,” noted Bunch sourly, “the whole discussion is academic: Easter is months and months off yet!”

    Corky didn’t think it was academic, but she didn’t think she could explain why, so she merely replied: “Yes.”

    And a glum silence descended over the smaller sofa in the boarders’ parlour at Miss Blake’s school.

    Miss Blake’s letter fluttered from Miss Ogilvie’s nerveless hand. “It’s dreadful! She’s got us mixed up!” she gasped.

    “She would have done,” agreed her younger sister.

    Miss Ogilvie looked at her dazedly.

    “She would have had her information from Lady Naseby, and we know that Lady N.’s got us mixed up,” explained Pansy.

    “Oh—yes,” said Miss Ogilvie faintly. She sank onto a chair. “This is frightful! She’s coming here expecting me to be able to do horrible mathematics and geography!”

    “Worse than that: to be able to teach ’em,” noted Miss Pansy.

    “Oh, Pansy: whatever shall we do?” she gasped.

    Pansy picked up the letter. “She’s offering you the position on account of these subjects that she supposes you can do,” she discovered.

    “Well, exactly! If only it were French or even Italian, I might make a push to— But mathematics and geography! I don’t even know—”

    “What two and two make at the equator.”

    “Exactly! And she’s coming all this way—”

    “Write and put her off.”

    “I can’t, Pansy: she’s due on Thursday, l doubt that a letter could possibly reach her in time.”

    “No. Oh, well, you’ll just have to admit that there’s been a mistake.”

    Miss Ogilvie swallowed. “Yes. But—but Pansy, what shall we do then? You know there is no money at all.”

    There was a short silence in the dim panelled room of the late Dr Ogilvie’s house on the outskirts of Oxford.

    Finally Pansy said: “If only Papa had not quarrelled with everyone at his old college—or if only we were boys, even! Then the College might do something for us.”

    “If we were boys,” said Miss Ogilvie with a sigh: “we should not be in this pickle.”

    “No; l would have gone to sea.” said Pansy definitely.

    “Silly one: you would have become a scholar like Papa.”

    “No; although I enjoy study, the contemplative life is not for me. l should prefer a life of action.” said Pansy, rising. “Yo HO! Heave AWAY, boys!” she cried. She held an imaginary spy-glass to her eye. “Signal? I do not perceive any sig—”

    “Don’t do your Lord Nelson, Pansy, dear,” said Miss Ogilvie with a sigh. “It seems... inappropriate, somehow, with dear Papa so lately gone.”

    “He would not have cared! He said himself I might go to sea with his blessing if l were a boy!” she cried. “But I will not be Lord Nelson if you would rather not. I shall just be a sea-captain. AHOY! Hoist the— Oh, sorry, Briggs,” she said sheepishly as an elderly parlourmaid came in looking enquiringly. “l was not calling you.”

    “No, but I think we might have the tea-tray, even though it is a little early,” decided Miss Ogilvie, smiling at Briggs.

    “Yes, Miss. And if you please, Miss, the butcher has sent a note”—Pansy groaned and Miss Ogilvie shut her eyes for a fleeting second—“saying as how he won’t let us have no more meat on tick, Miss.”

    “Then we had best do without meat for the foreseeable future, Briggs,” said Miss Ogilvie with determination.

    “Yes, Miss. Cook, she says them pullets can go, they ain’t never going to lay anyroad.”

    “Yes, very well, but it had better be one at a time.”

    “One a week,” corrected Pansy.

    “Very good, Miss,” said Briggs uncertainly.

    “Yes, one a week, Briggs,” confirmed Miss Ogilvie with a sigh.

    “Very good, Miss.” Briggs bobbed, and withdrew.

    “Oh, dear,” said Miss Ogilvie. “Whatever shall we do?”

    “I don’t want meat. Papa said that when he was a younger man, he spent several years as a vegetarian and it did not do him any harm!”

    “Not that, Pansy. About this position.”

    “You could lie,” she said thoughtfully.

    Miss Ogilvie reddened a little: that base thought had also occurred to her. “I could, but l would be very speedily found out. The minute I was faced with a globe, in fact.”

    This was true. Pansy sighed.

    “If only you could be me,” said Miss Ogilvie sadly. “Papa was used to say you had one of the finest mathematical minds he had ever encountered. And your geography is quite excellent, also.”

    “Yes...” she sighed. “Yes! That’s it!” she cried.

    “What is?” said her sister blankly.

    “Yes, Delphie! I shall be you, and you shall be me!”

    Philadelphia looked at her little sister weakly. “What can you mean, dearest”

    The late professor and his spouse had agreed, since they could not agree over their first child’s name, that they would name their offspring in turn. Dr Ogilvie had had first turn, and he had let his passion for geography run away with him, it was generally felt. On the other hand Mrs Ogilvie’s floral choice was not such as was calculated to gladden the seamanlike heart of its possessor. Unkind persons might have said that it was as well that the frailly feminine little Mrs Ogilvie had been carried off by an attack of pneumonia before she could produce a third child: the professor, still on the Americas theme, had had in mind “Wisconsin” for a boy and for a girl was torn between “Venezuela” and “Massachusetts”. Over the years the two girls had had several pets and they had not escaped the professor’s geographical mania, either: there had been a pair of terriers named Ottawa and Bombay, and cats variously labelled Munich, Gibraltar, and Kentucky. They still had two of Kentucky’s kittens but Pansy was responsible for their names: Trafalgar and Horatio Nelson. Consistency and determination were characteristic of the Ogilvies. Not to say eccentricity and a cheerful indifference to what the world thought of them. Philadelphia was more like her gentle mother, but even she was formed to a considerable extent in the Ogilvie mould. As events would shortly prove.

    “I shall be you, and you shall be me!” repeated Pansy excitedly. “It will be as easy as nothing, Delphie: you will have nothing to do but be meek and do your lessons, and I shall wear your dresses and put my hair up and teach these boring Misses pathetic little sums and how to recite the rivers of the world!”

    “It is supposed to be a very good school,” she said dubiously.

    “Pooh! It will be little more than that, you know what girls’ schools are like! So long as you don’t let on that you know all that history and so forth and can read in three foreign languages and speak French and Italian very well, we shall get on excellently!”

    “But—but you would have to pretend to be grown up,” faltered Philadelphia.

    “I know I am not very tall, but Briggs thinks I have my growth. You will see, once I have on a stupid corset and am wearing my hair up!”

    “Dearest, I did not mean your physical appearance.”

    “Oh,” she said blankly. “Oh!” she said with a laugh. “Well, it will be pretty boring, but I shall be on my best behaviour and not pretend to be Lord Nelson or even speak of the sea! And anything a little odd, I am sure they will put down to our being Papa’s daughters. And they will never dream it is a—a substitution, Delphie, for the idea is wholly beyond the pale of their circumscribed minds!”

    Philadelphia smiled a little. “It is the pale that is doing this circumscribing, l assume?” she murmured.

    “Yes!” said Pansy with a chuckle. “But what do you think, though? Do you not think it a splendid notion? It solves everything! We shall be able to use that money in Papa’s drawer to pay the butcher and everyone, and—and start with a clean slate!”

    Her sister gulped. “Dearest, it—it would not do, to practise such a deception.”

    “But why not? I would not be deceiving Miss Blake as to my qualifications, only as to my age!”

    “Um... Well, I suppose that’s true,” admitted the professor’s older daughter.

    “Exactly!” said Pansy, nodding frightfully. “And see,”—she waved the letter at her—“she intends paying you pounds and pounds a year! And our keep! Delphie, we cannot possibly turn it down, for otherwise how are we to pay poor Briggs and Cook?”

    Miss Ogilvie bit her lap.

    Pansy saw her broadside had hit. She came about and prepared to fire another salvo into her crippled adversary’s flank. “And there is no alternative, you know. Even if you could find a post as a governess, it would hardly support the both of us, would it? And then, you have no experience to recommend you and besides, you’re much too young and pretty: well, Professor Bridlington’s wife took one look at you and refused to have you coach those silly daughters of hers in Italian, didn’t she?”—Delphie nodded, biting her lip again.—“Yes. And she was proven right, too, for we have had that pathetic young Mr Bridlington hanging round the house forever!”

    Delphie swallowed. “Yes.”

    “I suppose you could always marry him,” allowed Pansy dubiously, forgetting that if one did not keep up fire after the initial broadside one’s adversary might get off a salvo on his own account.

    “No!” she gasped. “He’s scarcely twenty-one!”

    Pansy of course was only seventeen. “That’s grown up,” she said.

    Miss Ogilvie was turned twenty-five: the eight years between the girls was explained by the professor’s having put his passion for geography into practice to the extent of undertaking an expedition to South America. It was lucky indeed for Pansy that it had been Mrs Ogilvie’s turn to name the next baby, for on his return Dr Ogilvie had been still so fired up by his experiences that, had it been down to him, she might well have come in for “Cordillera.”

    Now Miss Ogilvie said firmly: “I could not possibly marry a man four years my junior and for whom I cannot care.”

    Pansy sighed. “No. l suppose it would be rather like Charlotte Lucas and Mr Collins.”

    Philadelphia had to smile a little: Mr Bridlington was not in the least like Mr Collins: he was fair and quite good-looking, and completely inarticulate. But it was certainly true she could not care for him. And as he was not very bright it was to be feared that she could not respect him, either. “Mm,” she murmured.

    “Well, there you are: what alternative is there?” said Pansy briskly.

    Miss Ogilvie bit her lip again. “We could try appealing to Great-Uncle Humphrey once more.”

    “Delphie, you are not going to go and skivvy in that horrid old man’s house!” she cried.

    When the girls had called after the death of their father Mr Humphrey Ogilvie had informed them he had no time for useless females but as his housekeeper was eating him out of house and home he thought he would get rid of her, and Philadelphia could take her place. And since Pansy had a few brains she might act as his secretary, if she wished. –Mr Humphrey Ogilvie was writing a book. Pansy had been quite tempted by this offer until she had taken a look at the dark, freezing-cold little room in which she would be expected to perform this task.

    Philadelphia swallowed. “Perhaps it would not be so very bad.”

    “It would be appalling!” she cried. “And he didn’t even propose paying you! And you know he never allows fires in the rooms between the first of May and the end of November, and that house is freezing, Delphie! You would come down with an inflammation of the lungs like Mamma!”

    “Mamma was very frail, my love,” she said gently. “I am much stronger, you know.”

    Pansy looked unconvinced: Philadelphia was a slender thing, not very much taller than she herself was, and while it was true she certainly had had no very serious illnesses, she had a tendency to putrid sore throats which old Mr Humphrey Ogilvie’s house would most certainly encourage.

    “But I don’t think we could possibly,” added Philadelphia. “Your eyes would suffer terribly in that dark little bookroom of his, and he’s so mean with candles—”

    “Well, exactly!” said Pansy in relief..

    “Only—only what else can we possibly do?”

    “Delphie, I’ve just said! I shall be you, and take this position with Miss Blake, and at least for a year we shall be warm and fed and housed!”

    “Ye-es... It seems such a mad scheme,” said Delphie on a weak note.

    “On the contrary, it is eminently sensible,” said Pansy firmly.

    “Ye-es... I suppose we could write to Aunt Venetia.”

    “Delphie, you know Uncle Simeon Parker is as poor as the proverbial church mouse; and with all those children of theirs, how could we possibly justify foisting ourselves on them when there is an alternative by which we may be independent and pay our own way?”

    The late Dr Ogilvie had been very keen on independence and paying one’s own way, and had drummed the idea into his children’s heads, even though they were girls and not boys: so Philadelphia flushed up and nodded.

    Pansy now perceived she had but to grapple and board, and it would finish the encounter. She proceeded to do so. The good ship Philadelphia did not go down without a struggle, but in the end—as was, indeed, generally the case with the Ogilvie sisters—the stronger-minded Pansy prevailed, and, having drunk their tea, the two went up to Delphie’s bedroom in order for Pansy to be made over into the facsimile of a young lady.

    Pansy herself would have gone the whole hog and worn bands and a cap but Delphie was of the opinion that Miss Blake would be less convinced, not more, by a young lady’s of supposedly twenty-five years getting herself up so, and eventually braided her sister’s long, thick, tangled brown curls neatly into a sort of coronet.

    As well as being a trifle shorter than her sister, Pansy was more robust, and so Delphie’s dresses were a little tight round the bust on her, but with judicious tightening of the corset and with the aid of a carefully placed tucker, Delphie thought she would do well enough in the woollen dress which had been dyed black for their mourning. “You had best wear the corset every day until she comes, Pansy: that will accustom you to it.”

    “Yes!” she gasped.

    Delphie looked at her critically.

    “Do l look grown up?” she said hopefully.

    “You look a lot older, certainly,” admitted her sister in not a little surprise. “Putting your hair up like that quite changes the shape of your face.”

    Pansy peered at herself in Delphie’s little mirror. “Yes, I do look older.”

    “Ye-es... Wait!” cried Delphie, inspired. She rushed out of the room.

    Pansy duly waited, not without a sneaky attempt to pull the top of the corset out a bit and a certain amount of wriggling.

    “Here!” said Delphie, smiling. She perched a pair of their Papa’s pince-nez on Pansy’s short little nose. “Oh, my,” she said feebly. “l never realized how like him you are, Pansy.”

    Pansy goggled at herself in the mirror. “They make everything seem very close and big,” she reported. “—Help, yes: you’re right.” She poked at her cheeks. “l think there may be cheekbones under this pudge!” she said cheerfully.

    “Dearest, not pudge: it is the roundness of youth,” objected Delphie. “But you certainly have Papa’s square chin.”

    “Mm.” Pansy poked at it.

    “I really think one could easily take you for twenty-five.”

    “Yes: good. –I shall pin the pince-nez to mv bosom as Miss Simpson does,”  she decided.

    Delphie had to swallow: Miss Simpson was in her sixties.

    “Then I shan’t lose them!” added Pansy with a chuckle.

    “No; well, it might be wise. I think you might use Mamma’s bow brooch to do so.” It was a little gold brooch: Delphie produced it from her drawer. “You’ve got the look, Pansy: now you will have to develop the manner.”

    “I shall pretend I am Miss Simpson!” she cried.

    “No,” said Delphie, wincing. “It would not be convincing. Just be—um—quiet and ladylike and—and self-effacing!”

    “Help, that’s not going to be easy. Um... Shall I pretend to be the Grovers’ governess?”

    “No. Well, she is self-effacing, that is true, poor thing, but she is not very bright. We want Miss Blake to accept you, you know.”

    Pansy made a face. “Mm. Um... Jane Bennet’?”

    “Who— Oh!” she said, smiling. “Well, she was certainly quiet and well-behaved. No, stay: Charlotte Lucas would be a better model!”

    The sisters collapsed in giggles.

    “Oh, dear,” said Delphie, recovering first. “This isn’t very schoolmistressly!”

    “No. –l have it!” she cried, falling back on an earlier work from their favourite author. “Elinor Dashwood!”

    Delphie had found Miss Dashwood, though admirable and proper, just the teeniest bit boring: she knew Pansy had, too. “I cannot think of a better model tor a young lady to follow, certainly.”

    “Exactly!” she beamed.

    “Yes. Well, you may start by avoiding your usual exclamatory style,” said Delphie with a smile. “l shall try that print of yours, dearest.”

    And soon Miss Ogilvie was neat and tidy in Pansy’s old print gown, with her hair brushed out.

    “I suppose you could pass for seventeen,” said Pansy. “That gown is even shorter on you than it is on me: it does make you appear younger.”

    “Mm... Should l wear an apron?”

    “I don’t know, Delphie,” she said with a sigh. “Um, does Clara Bridlington wear an apron? She’s the same age as me.”

    “No,” admitted Delphie.

    “That’s all right, then. You can model yourself on her: she is stupid and meek enough, at all events.”

    “Poor thing,” agreed Delphie, sighing a little. “Very well, l shall be Clara.”

    “Let us look at ourselves in the big glass in Papa’s room!” They went and stood side-by-side before the cheval mirror that had been Mrs Ogilvie’s.

    After a few moments Pansy admitted: “Well, I’m convinced.”

    “It—it is quite amazing... Oh, dear, Pansy: I fear it is naughty, though!”

    The girls looked at each other. Simultaneously they broke down in terrific gales of giggles.

    “We have nothing to worry about!” gasped Pansy eventually. “It is as I said: no-one would ever, ever guess!”

    “You are right: it is outrageously beyond the circumscribed pale!” gasped Miss Ogilvie.

    More giggles.

    Then Pansy smoothed her dress and said with a little frown that made her look quite incredibly like their Papa: “l think that is enough of this frivolity, Philadelphia, dear. Shall we just go and sit quietly in the parlour?”

    Delphie gulped. “That was very good,” she said weakly. “Only am l not supposed to be Pansy?”

    “Um... Actually I don’t think that will ever work.”

    Delphie didn’t, either. She bit her lip and looked doubtfully at her sister.

    “Um...” said Pansy. “Well, given that Lady Naseby has our—our capabilities thoroughly mixed up, I think we might justifiably attribute a certain confusion to her, and tell Miss Blake that she had our names mixed up, do not you?”

    Delphie thought it over. “Ye-es... Yes, actually, I think we had better. And in the case we should ever be found out, we shall say that—that it was not deliberate substitution on our part, but arose out of Lady Naseby’s mistake!” She beamed at her.

    Pansy frowned over it. “Um... Well, I’m not too sure that that is logical, but the more I think about it the more confused I get, so I’m pretty sure anyone else would be muddled, too! Good, let us do that. –Come along, shall we go down to the parlour and practise? I think you could jump the last three stairs: that will help to put you in the mood.”

    “Two,” said Delphie faintly. “And I am sure Clara Bridlington never jumps stairs at all.”

    “No, but I think you need to indulge in a piece of definite frivolity, to get you started on being seventeen again!” she said with a giggle.

    “Don’t giggle,” replied Delphie.

    “Really, Philadelphia: it is hardly your place to reprove me,” said Pansy, walking out of the room in a stately manner.

    “Pansy, you’re not Lady Catherine de Burgh!” she cried.

    “Never mind: practice makes perfect.” Pansy began to descend the stairs carefully.

    Delphie followed with a dubious expression on her face. “I can’t,” she said on the third stair.

    “What?” said Pansy in alarm. “Oh! You mean jump them! Well, come down one more and just jump the last.”

    Delphie did this,

    “Well?” said Pansy, grinning.

    “I do teel younger—to tell you the truth, dearest, l feel almost—almost a sensation of liberation!” she said with a laugh.

    “Of course you do, you’re out of this dashed corset!” returned the doughty seaman with feeling, tugging at the top of it.

    “Er—yes. Don’t do that, Pansy,” she said weakly.

    For reply Pansy perched the pince-nez on her nose and looked at her sternly.

    Promptly Delphie collapsed in giggles.

    “Well,” said Pansy cheerfully, “that is more like seventeen! l think we have a good chance of pulling this off!” She went into the parlour: smiling, but in a markedly serene manner.

    Delphie, of course, had several fits of second thoughts before the dread day arrived, but Pansy got her through them. For after all, what other course was open to them? And Delphie’s part would be by far the easier: she would just have to support being one of a pack of giggling girls. Delphie realized that, and to say truth that wasn’t exactly what was worrying her. But what with incessant practising and the somewhat awed co-operation of Briggs, who had had to be let into the secret, by the time Thursday arrived Pansy felt herself capable of her self-imposed rôle of Miss Ogilvie, prospective schoolmarm and learned mathematician-geographer of twenty-five.

    “Well, my dear, what did you think?” asked Mrs Warrenby eagerly on Miss Blake’s return to their Oxford hotel after her interview with the Miss Ogilvies.

    Miss Blake sighed a little. “I suppose Miss Ogilvie will be satisfactory... To say truth, Amelia, she seems very young for her age. Well, of course she was feeling shy—they were both shy.”

    “Do you think she will not be able to maintain discipline, then, my dear?”

    “Er... No, I do not know that l would say that, entirely, Amelia, for in spite of her youthfulness there is a certain determination about her. I think she may manage that side of it well enough.”

    “And it is true that she has an excellent grasp of mathematics and geography?”

    Miss Blake smiled. “Oh, indeed!  Her grasp of mathematics is far, far above my own, and l would venture to suggest way beyond anything that Miss Worrington has ever attained. Apparently she was used to discuss her Papa’s subject with him as an equal.”

    “Good gracious!”

    “Yes. Well, he quarrelled with the members of his college many years back, so when he sought private pupils to help eke out their income a little, he evidently obtained only those who—well, who were very much in need of coaching. I think that Miss Ogilvie has taken the place of the finer pupils he might have had. In fact one could say he treated her very much as the son he never had.”

    “I see. And the younger girl? Miss—er—Pansy, I think?”

     “No: it appears that Lady Naseby has confused the girls’ names, and it is Miss Ogilvie who is Pansy. The younger one—er—is called Philadelphia.”

    “What?” said Mrs Warren faintly.

    “The Papa was a geographer, my love.”

    “No, but really, Naomi!”

    Miss Blake smiled a tittle. “That was my reaction, too. They call her Delphie, in the family. But Miss Ogilvie assures me it could have been worse and that one of her Papa’s other choices was ‘Massachusetts’. Er—that is also a place in America, my love.”

    “Naomi, he must have been a raving eccentric!”

    “I think he was,” said Miss Blake placidly.

    After a moment Mrs Warrenby said: “And Miss Ogilvie volunteered that information?”

    “Mm? Oh: about Massachusetts! Yes, indeed!” She laughed a little but added: “That really is indicative of what makes me a little doubtful about the wisdom of employing her as a teacher. She is very... very naïve,” she said slowly.

    “I see. But my dear, the poor little thing, growing up in a very odd household without a mamma: they cannot have socialized much if the Papa made a habit of alienating those who might have helped him in life, l think!”

    “You are quite right, my love: naturally the daughters did not describe him as much in so many words, but he seems to have been a man of very strong—and of course very unorthodox—opinions, who did not know the meaning of the word compromise.”

    “Well, there you are!” she cried. “What chance has she had to learn anything at all of the world, poor little thing?”

    “Yes. Well, l have taken her on, and we shall see how she goes on, this year.”

    “Mv love, with you to guide her l am sure she will do very well!” beamed Mrs Warrenby. “And the little sister? What is she like?”

    Miss Blake smiled. “She seems a very quiet, well-behaved girl. Excellent manners. In fact if I had not known, I should have said she was the elder! The only fear I have with regard to Miss Delphie, in fact, is that she may find it difficult to support with equanimity the company of the sillies who adorn our senior class!”

    “Never mind, my dear, did you not say it was definite that Pretty Hallam and the Tarlington girl will be with you only for the rest of the Hilary term?”

    “Yes. And thank goodness for it!” said Miss Blake. laughing a  little.

    “Indeed. And when will the Miss Ogilvies come to us?”

    “Well...” Miss Blake looked a little conscious. “l think, if you should not dislike it` my love, l shall stay on here for a few days and bring them back with me. They were proposing to take the stage, but...”

    The kindly Mrs Warrenby agreed that of course the girls must not be left to travel on the common stage, and urged Naomi to do all she could to help them in the business of winding up their father’s estate. She wondered a little that the aunt or her husband had not cared to come and assist the girls, but Miss Blake murmured that she rather thought Dr Ogilvie had quarrelled with them, also: the girls had never met their aunt and although she had offered to come, Miss Ogilvie had written to say there was no need. And then, it was a long way.

    “Well, it seems to be all in train! –My dear,” said Mrs Warrenby, “I think I may stay on with you, if that would suit: I had not realized that Oxford has such excellent shops; and then, you know, Cissie Thurlow—Cissie Powell that was—lives just a little out of the town, and it would give me the opportunity to call!”

    Miss Blake consenting with pleasure to this proposal, Mrs Warrenby forthwith sat down to pen a little note apprising Violet of the delay before her mamma should return to her.

    So it was settled. And on the following Monday Miss Blake’s comfortable post-chaise set forth for Brighton and thence the school, bearing not only the headmistress herself and her sister, but also the false Miss Ogilvie and the false seventeen-year-old pupil.

    Plus a basket containing Mr Horatio Nelson. For Miss Blake’s old cat having lately died and the school being without one, she had agreed that the Miss Ogilvies might bring one of theirs. Briggs had been very content to take Mrs Trafalgar, so it had worked out very well. And all Kentucky’s progeny were excellent mousers, Miss Ogilvie had assured Miss Blake eagerly.

     Miss Blake had smiled and agreed that that was good; but privately reflected once again on Miss Ogilvie’s youth and naïvety, hoping very much that the Miss Ogilvie experiment would not turn out to be as fatal as the Miss Hutchinson experiment. Miss Hutchinson had been bright, but quite young and pretty, and had endeavoured to become friends with the girls and meet them on their own level, which had not worked out at all: she had ended up, of course, taking sides with the girls and permitting them to get up to all sorts of nonsense in an effort to maintain her popularity with them—and, in short, her services had had to be dispensed with. It was true that Miss Ogilvie did not strike Miss Blake as silly, if she was young, and it was also true that the fatal Miss Hutchinson error had been made when Miss Blake herself had been a good twelve years younger than she was now; but still...

    Wait and see, thought Miss Blake.

    As the coach pulled out of Oxford Miss Delphie was seen to be silently crying: Miss Blake looked on with considerable approval as Miss Ogilvie pressed a handkerchief into her sister’s hand, and held her free hand very tight but did not say anything which might have drawn attention to the girl’s disturbance.

    She was, of course, unaware that the sturdy sea-captain was mentally sending up an anguished prayer to the Supreme Being in whom neither of Dr Ogilvie’s daughters believed very much that Delphie would not collapse all of a heap and confess their transgressions to Miss Blake when the adventure was only just begun.

    For—whether for good or for ill—an adventure was what the whole thing had now become in Pansy’s eyes. Far from shaking in her shoes as poor Delphie was doing, she was looking forward with great excitement to a year of being grown-up Miss Ogilvie, mathematician and geographer—and of completely fooling clever Miss Blake, pleasant Mrs Warrenby, and a whole school full of giggling Gerties!

Next Chapter:

https://theogilvieconnection.blogspot.com/2022/09/guillyford-place.html