"Allen, Grant - Miss Cayley's Adventures 01 - The Adventure of the Cantankerous Old Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Grant)

MISS CAYLEY'S ADVENTURES_ (1899), ch. 1

by Grant Allen

published by Grant Richards

I

THE ADVENTURE OF THE CANTANKEROUS OLD LADY

ON the day when I found myself with twopence in my pocket, I
naturally made up my mind to go round the world.

It was my stepfather's death that drove me to it. I had
never seen my stepfather. Indeed, I never even thought of
him as anything more than Colonel Watts-Morgan. I owed him
nothing, except my poverty. He married my dear mother when
I was a girl at school in Switzerland; and he proceeded to
spend her little fortune, left at her sole disposal by my
father's will, in paying his gambling debts. After that, he
carried my dear mother off to Burma; and when he and the
climate between them had succeeded in killing her, he made
up for his appropriations at the cheapest rate by allowing
me just enough to send me to Girton. So, when the Colonel
died, in the year I was leaving college, I did not think it
necessary to go into mourning for him. Especially as he
chose the precise moment when my allowance was due, and
bequeathed me nothing but his consolidated liabilities.

'Of course you will teach,' said Elsie Petheridge, when I
explained my affairs to her. 'There is a good demand just
now for high-school teachers.'

I looked at her, aghast. 'Teach! Elsie, I cried (I had
come up to town to settle her in at her unfurnished
lodgings.) 'Did you say teach? That's just like you dear
good schoolmistresses! You go to Cambridge, and get
examined till the heart and life have been examined out of
you; then you say to yourselves at the end of it all, "Let
me see; what am I good for now? I'm just about fit to go
away and examine other people!" That's what our Principal
would call "a vicious circle"--if one could ever admit there
was anything vicious at all about you, dear. No, Elsie, I
do not propose to teach. Nature did not cut me out for a
high-school teacher. I couldn't swallow a poker if I tried
for weeks. Pokers don't agree with me. Between ourselves,
I am a bit of a rebel.'

'You are, Brownie,' she answered, pausing in her papering,
with her sleeves rolled up--they called me 'Brownie,' partly