INTRODUCTION.

One bright afternoon, or rather evening, in May, two girls, with basket in hand, were seen leaving the little seaport town in which they resided, for the professed purpose of primrose gathering, but in reality to enjoy the pure air of the first summer-like evening of a season, which had been unusually cold and backward. Their way lay through bowery lanes scented with sweet brier and hawthorn, and every now and then glorious were the views of the beautiful ocean, which lay calmly reposing and smiling beneath the setting sun. “How unlike that stormy, dark, and noisy sea of but a week ago!” so said the friends to each other, as they listened to its distant musical murmur, and heard the waves break gently on the shingly beach.

Although we have called them friends, there was a considerable difference in their ages. That tall and pleasing, though plain, girl in black, was the governess of the younger. Her name was Emilie Schomberg. The little rosy, dark-eyed, and merry girl, her pupil, we shall call Edith Parker. She had scarcely numbered twelve Mays, and was at the age when primrosing and violeting have not lost their charms, and when spring is the most welcome, and the dearest of all the four seasons. Emilie Schomberg, as her name may lead you to infer, was a German. She spoke English, however, so well, that you would scarcely have supposed her to be a foreigner, and having resided in England for some years, had been accustomed to the frequent use of that language. Emilie Schomberg was the daily governess of little Edith. Little she was always called, for she was the youngest of the family, and at eleven years of age, if the truth must be told of her, was a good deal of a baby.

Several schemes of education had been tried for this same little Edith, schools and governesses and masters, but Emilie Schomberg, who now came to her for a few hours every other day, had obtained greater influence over her than any former instructor; and in addition to the German, French, and music, which she undertook to teach, she instructed Edith in a few things not really within her province, but nevertheless of some importance; of these you shall judge. The search for primroses was not a silent search Edith is the first speaker.

“Yes, Emilie, but it was very provoking, after I had finished my lessons so nicely, and got done in time to walk out with you, to have mamma fancy I had a cold, when I had nothing of the kind. I almost wish some one would turn really ill, and then she would not fancy I was so, quite so often.”

“Oh, hush, Edith dear! you are talking nonsense, and you are saying what you cannot mean. I don’t like to hear you so pert to that kind mamma of yours, whenever she thinks it right to contradict you.”

“Emilie, I cannot help saying, and you know yourself, though you call her kind, that mamma is cross, very cross sometimes. Yes, I know she is very fond of me and all that, but still she is cross, and it is no use denying it. Oh, dear, I wish I was you. You never seem to have anything to put you out. I never see you look as if you had been crying or vexed, but I have so many many things to vex me at home.”

Emilie smiled. “As to my having nothing to put me out, you may be right, and you may be wrong, dear. There is never any excuse for being what you call put out, by which I understand cross and pettish, but I am rather amused, too, at your fixing on a daily governess, as a person the least likely in the world to have trials of temper and patience.” “Yes, I dare say I vex you sometimes, but” “Well, not to speak of you, dear, whom I love very much, though you are not perfect, I have other pupils, and do you suppose, that amongst so many as I have to teach at Miss Humphrey’s school, for instance, there is not one self-willed, not one impertinent, not one idle, not one dull scholar? My dear, there never was a person, you may be sure of that, who had nothing to be tried, or, as you say, put out with. But not to talk of my troubles, and I have not many I will confess, except that great one, Edith, which, may you be many years before you know, (the loss of a father;) not to talk of that, what are your troubles? Your mamma is cross sometimes, that is to say, she does not always give you all you ask for, crosses you now and then, is that all?”

“Oh no Emilie, there are Mary and Ellinor, they never seem to like me to be with them, they are so full of their own plans and secrets. Whenever I go into the room, there is such a hush and mystery. The fact is, they treat me like a baby. Oh, it is a great misfortune to be the youngest child! but of all my troubles, Fred is the greatest. John teases me sometimes, but he is nothing to Fred. Emilie, you don’t know what that boy is; but you will see, when you come to stay with me in the holidays, and you shall say then if you think I have nothing to put me out.”

The very recollection of her wrongs appeared to irritate the little lady, and she put on a pout, which made her look anything but kind and amiable.

The primroses which she had so much desired, were not quite to her mind, they were not nearly so fine as those that John and Fred had brought home. Now she was tired of the dusty road, and she would go home by the beach. So saying, Edith turned resolutely towards a stile, which led across some fields to the sea shore, and not all Emilie’s entreaties could divert her from her purpose.

“Edith, dear! we shall be late, very late! as it is we have been out too long, come back, pray do;” but Edith was resolute, and ran on. Emilie, who knew her pupil’s self-will over a German lesson, although she had little experience of her temper in other matters, was beginning to despair of persuading her, and spoke yet more earnestly and firmly, though still kindly and gently, but in vain. Edith had jumped over the stile, and was on her way to the cliff, when her course was arrested by an old sailor, who was sitting on a bench near the gangway leading to the shore. He had heard the conversation between the governess and her headstrong pupil, as he smoked his pipe on this favourite seat, and playfully caught hold of the skirt of the young lady’s frock, as she passed, to Edith’s great indignation.

“Now, Miss, I could not, no, that I could’nt, refuse any one who asked me so pretty as that lady did you. If she had been angry, and commanded you back, why bad begets bad, and tit for tat you know, and I should not so much have wondered: but, Miss, you should not vex her. No, don’t be angry with an old man, I have seen so much of the evils of young folks taking their own way. Look here, young lady,” said the weather beaten sailor, as he pointed to a piece of crape round his hat; “this comes of being fond of one’s own way.”

Edith was arrested, and approached the stile, on the other side of which Emilie Schomberg still leant, listening to the fisherman’s talk with her pupil.

“You see, Miss,” said he, “I have brought her round, she were a little contrary at first, but the squall is over, and she is going home your way. Oh, a capital good rule, that of your’s, Miss!” “What,” said Emilie smiling, “Why, that ‘soft answer,’ that kind way. I see a good deal of the ways of nurses with children, ah, and of governesses, and mothers, and fathers too, as I sit about on the sea shore, mending my nets. I ain’t fit for much else now, you see, Miss, though I have seen a deal of service, and as I sit sometimes watching the little ones playing on the sand, and with the shingle, I keep my ears open, for I can’t bear to see children grieved, and sometimes I put in a word to the nurse maids. Bless me! to see how some of ’em whip up the children in the midst of their play. Neither with your leave, nor by your leave; ’here, come along, you dirty, naughty boy, here’s a wet frock! Come, this minute, you tiresome child, it’s dinner time.’ Now that ain’t what I call fair play, Miss. I say you ought to speak civil, even to a child; and then, the crying, and the shaking, and the pulling up the gangway. Many and many is the little squaller I go and pacify, and carry as well as I can up the cliff: but I beg pardon, Miss, hope I don’t offend. Only I was afraid, Miss there was a little awkward, and would give you trouble.”

“Indeed,” said Emilie, “I am much obliged to you; where do you live?”

“I live,” said the old man, “I may say, a great part of my life, under the sky, in summer time, but I lodge with my son, and he lives between this and Brooke. In winter time, since the rheumatics has got hold of me, I am drawn to the fire side, but my son’s wife, she don’t take after him, bless him. She’s a bit of a spirit, and when she talks more than I like, why I wish myself at sea again, for an angry woman’s tongue is worse than a storm at sea, any day; if it was’nt for the children, bless ’em, I should not live with ’em, but I am very partial to them.”

“Well, we must say good night, now,” said Emilie, “or we shall be late home; I dare say we shall see you on the shore some day; good night.” “Good night to you, ma’am; good night, young lady; be friends, won’t you?”

Edith’s hand was given, but it was not pleasant to be conquered, and she was a little sullen on the way home. They parted at the door of Edith’s house. Edith went in, to join a cheerful family in a comfortable and commodious room; Emilie, to a scantily furnished, and shabbily genteel apartment, let to her and a maiden aunt by a straw bonnet maker in the town.

We will peep at her supper table, and see if Miss Edith were quite right in supposing that Emilie Schomberg had nothing to put her out.