'You must not expect too much respect to a southerner at first. I did battle on your behalf before you came, Miss Lambert, and got terribly worsted. "Bless me, weel, Doctor!" says Nan, "what's the matter that t'maister's sister come here? I can do verra weel by messel', and Miss Olive can fend for hersel'; it's nought but daftness, but it's ne'er my business; if they please themselves they please me. I must bide t'bitterment."'
'Nan and I will be great friends soon; we must learn to respect each other's prejudices. Poor Olive had not a chance of putting in a word. Nan treated her as though she were a mere infant.'
'She has known her ever since she was one, you see, Miss Lambert. I have been putting Polly through her paces, and find she has plenty to learn and unlearn.'
'I suppose she has been tolerably well educated?'
'Pretty fairly, but after a desultory fashion. I fancy she has picked up knowledge somehow, as a bird picks up crumbs; her French accent is perfect, and she knows a little German. She is mostly deficient in English. I must have a long talk with Mrs. Cranford.'
'I understood Polly was to take lessons from her?'
'You must take an early opportunity of making her acquaintance; she is truly excellent; the girls are fortunate in having such an instructress. Do you know, Chrissy is already a fair Latin scholar.'
'No, Chriss is the bluestocking--does Euclid with the boys, and already develops a taste for mathematics. Mr. Lambert used to direct her severer studies. I believe Richard does it now. Olive's talents lie in quite another direction.'
'I am anxious to know--is she really clever?' asked Mildred, astonished at this piece of information.
'I believe she is tolerably well read for a girl of her age, and is especially fond of languages--the modern ones I mean--though her father has taught her Latin. I have always thought myself, that under that timid and lethargic exterior there is a vast amount of imaginative force--certain turns of speech in her happier moments prove it to me. I should not be surprised if we live to discover she has genius.'
'I am convinced that hers is no ordinary mind,' returned Mildred, seriously; 'but her goodness somehow pains one.'
'Have you ever heard Roy's addition to the table of weights and measures, "How many scruples make an olive?" he asked. 'My dear Miss Lambert, that girl is a walking conscience; she has the sort of mind that adds, subtracts, divides, and multiplies duties, till the grasshopper becomes a burden; she is one of the most thoroughly uncomfortable Christians I ever knew. It is a disease,' he continued, more gravely, 'a form of internal and spiritual hyperclimacteric, and must be treated as such.'