Mistress of Mellyn Read Online Free PDF Page B

with those about us.”
    ” What does it matter, if they’re not about us … if we can have them sent away?”
    ” Kindness matters more than anything in the world.”
    She smiled into her milk and finished it.
    ” Now,” I said, ” to bed.”
    I rose with her and she said : ” I go to bed by myself. I am not a baby, you know.”
    ” Perhaps I thought you were younger than you are because you have so much to learn.”
    She considered that. Then she gave that shrug of her shoulders’ which I was to discover was characteristic.
    ” Good night,” she said, dismissing me.
    ” I’ll come and say good night when you are in bed.”
    ” There’s no need.”
    ” Nevertheless, I’ll come.”
    She opened the door which led to her room from the school room. I turned and went into mine.
    I felt very depressed because I was realising the size of the problem before me. I had no experience of handling children, and in the past when I thought of them I had visualised docile and affectionate little creatures whom it would be a joy to care for. Here I was with a difficult child on my hands. And what would happen to me if it were decided that I was unfit to undertake her care? What did happen to penurious gentle women who failed to please their employers?
    I could go to PhiUida. I could be one of those old aunts who were at the beck and call of all and lived out their miserable lives dependent on others. I was not the sort of person to take dependence lightly. I should have to find other posts.
    I accepted the fact that I was a little frightened. Not until I had come face to face with Alvean had I realised that I might not succeed with this job. I tried not to look down the years ahead when I might slip from one post to another, never giving satisfaction. What happened to women like myself, women who, without those attractions which were so important, were forced to battle against the world for a chance to live?
    I felt that I could have thrown myself on my bed and wept, wept with anger against the cruelty of life, which had robbed me of two loving parents and sent me out ill-equipped into the world.
    I imagined myself appearing at Alvean’s bedside, my face stained with tears. What triumph for her! That was no way to begin the battle which I was sure must rage between us.
    I walked up and down my room, trying to control my emotions. I went to the window and looked out across the lawns to the hilly country beyond. I could not see the sea because the house was so built that the back faced the coast and I was at the front. Instead I looked beyond the plateau on which the house stood, to the hills.
    Such beauty! Such peace without, I ‘thought. Such conflict within.
    When I leaned out of the window I could see Mount Widden across the cove. Two houses standing there over many years; generations of Nansellocks, generations of TreMellyns had lived here and their lives had intermingled so that it could well be that the story of one house was the story of the other.
    I turned from the window and went through the schoolroom to Alvean’s room.
    ” Alvean,” I whispered. There was no answer. But she lay there in the bed, her eyes tightly shut, too tightly.
    I bent over her.
    “Good night, Alvean. We’re going to be friends, you know,” I murmured.
    There was no answer. She was pretending to be asleep.
    Exhausted as I was, my rest was broken that night. I would fall into sleep and then awake startled. I repeated this several times until I was fully awake.
    I lay in bed and looked about my room in which the furniture showed up in intermittent moonlight like dim figures. I had a feeling that I was not alone; that there were whispering voices about me. I had an impression that there had been tragedy in this house which still hung over it.
    I wondered if it was due to the death of Alvean’s mother. She had been dead only a year; I wondered in what circumstances she had died.
    I thought of Alvean who showed a somewhat aggressive face to