'Good night, my dear Maud;' and turning to her, he said, with a peculiar
gentle sharpness, 'Had not you better wake, my dear, and try whether your
cousin would like some supper?'
So he accompanied us to the door, outside which we found L'Amour's candle
awaiting us.
'I'm awful afraid of the Governor, I am. Did I snore that time?'
'No, dear; at least, I did not hear it,' I said, unable to repress a smile.
'Well, if I didn't, I was awful near it,' she said, reflectively.
We found poor Mary Quince dozing over the fire; but we soon had tea and
other good things, of which Milly partook with a wonderful appetite.
'I _was_ in a qualm about it,' said Milly, who by this time was quite
herself again. 'When he spies me a-napping, maybe he don't fetch me a prod
with his pencil-case over the head. Odd! girl, it _is_ sore.'
When I contrasted the refined and fluent old gentleman whom I had just
left, with this amazing specimen of young ladyhood, I grew sceptical almost
as to the possibility of her being his child.
I was to learn, however, how little she had, I won't say of his society,
but even of his presence--that she had no domestic companion of the least
pretensions to education--that she ran wild about the place--never, except
in church, so much as saw a person of that rank to which she was born--and
that the little she knew of reading and writing had been picked up, in
desultory half-hours, from a person who did not care a pin about her
manners or decorum, and perhaps rather enjoyed her grotesqueness--and that
no one who was willing to take the least trouble about her was competent
to make her a particle more refined than I saw her--the wonder ceased.
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