without preface or prelude, she said, almost in the tone of one
making an accusation, »Meess, in England you were a governess.«
    »No, madame,« said I smiling, »you are mistaken.«
    »Is this your first essay at teaching - this attempt with my children?«
    I assured her it was. Again she became silent; but looking up, as I took a
pin from the cushion, I found myself an object of study: she held me under her
eye; she seemed turning me round in her thoughts - measuring my fitness for a
purpose, weighing my value in a plan. Madame had, ere this, scrutinized all I
had, and I believe she esteemed herself cognizant of much that I was; but from
that day, for the space of about a fortnight, she tried me by new tests. She
listened at the nursery door when I was shut in with the children; she followed
me at a cautious distance when I walked out with them, stealing within ear-shot
whenever the trees of park or boulevard afforded a sufficient screen: a strict
preliminary process having thus been observed, she made a move forward.
    One morning, coming on me abruptly, and with the semblance of hurry, she
said she found herself placed in a little dilemma. Mr. Wilson, the English
master, had failed to come at his hour, she feared he was ill; the pupils were
waiting in classe; there was no one to give a lesson; should I, for once, object
to giving a short dictation exercise, just that the pupils might not have it to
say they had missed their English lesson?
    »In classe, madam?« I asked.
    »Yes, in classe: in the second division.«
    »Where there are sixty pupils,« said I; for I knew the number, and with my
usual base habit of cowardice, I shrunk into my sloth, like a snail into its
shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a pretext to escape
action. If left to myself, I should infallibly have let this chance slip.
Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical ambition, I was capable of
sitting twenty years teaching infants the hornbook, turning silk dresses, and
making children's frocks. Not that true contentment dignified this infatuated
resignation: my work had neither charm for my taste, nor hold on my interest;
but it seemed to me a great thing to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from
intimate trial; the negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to
happiness I expected to