"But supposing," argued Blanche, "that the person tells you the thing before he or she says, 'Don't tell any one,' ought I to try to do without telling mother? It would be an awful risk," she added solemnly.
"Well," replied Miss Waspe, "personally, I don't like secrets, except, perhaps, about presents or pleasant surprises for people. I think I should advise you, for the present, at any rate, to make the stipulation that you be allowed to tell your mother anything and everything, but at the same time you must learn to control yourself and keep your own counsel so far as other people are concerned."
"I'll try," said Blanche, looking very solemn, "but I haven't much hope."
After that the girls teased their good-natured governess with many other "problems," as they called them, such as, "Whether would you choose to be very pretty and very poor, or very rich and quite plain?" and another, "Whether would you prefer to walk in a very fashionable place with a person you love, who is so badly dressed as to attract attention, or with a nicely-dressed person for whom you did not care so much?"
Miss Waspe rather encouraged the girls to give their opinions on all sorts of subjects, as she liked them to think.
"Learn to think and to see," she would say. And one day she told them how, when she was a girl, she had been made to learn some lines by heart, which had helped her to begin thinking for herself. "I think they frightened me into it," she said, laughing. "They were written by Carlyle; you will know something of his works some day, I hope. This is what he says: 'Not one in a thousand has the smallest turn for thinking; only for passive dreaming, and hearsaying, and active babbling by rote. Of the eyes that men do glare withal, so few can see.' It sounds rather like a scolding, doesn't it? Well, I don't want you to be like that; I want you both to think and to see, and you will find much happiness to think about and many beauties to see."
Certainly Marjory's world had grown much wider and brighter by this woman's thought. The romance and wonder of reality put before the girl had opened up possibilities of interest in every direction to her who was so eager to learn and so quick to see. To give an instance: it may be remembered that in her days of loneliness Marjory had woven fairy stories about the flowers and trees in the garden and the woods. Knowledge had now replaced these fairy tales with facts far more marvellous than any of her fancies had been.