The Charm School
particularly happy, and where Elise will be incredibly lonely. You, perhaps, don't understand how much that child craves affection, intimate daily affection. She has one of the warmest, tenderest hearts I ever knew. If you send her to live alone in that great lonely house with that selfish, busy old man, she will simply marry the first commonplace boy who presents himself. I hear there's one hanging about her now. But I'm afraid we are disturbing the bookkeeper. He doesn't seem to be able to work while we talk."
"Oh no, he doesn't even hear us," said Austin, impatient of this interruption to the train of thought. "Who's hanging about her?"
"No one of importance—her room-mate's brother, I hear."
"Elise seems to be a little young for that sort of thing," Austin began in a manner thoroughly pedagogic, but Miss Hayes interrupted him:
"Too young? Why, half the girls are engaged and all of them in love. As for Elise, I could tell you things about her love-affairs for the last two years. Too young! Why, that just shows that you really are not fit to have the education of girls. When
[ 85 ]
