The Man | Page 9

son as well as his daughter, she must from the first be
accustomed to boyish as well as to girlish ways. This, in that she was
an only child, was not a difficult matter to accomplish. Had she had
brothers and sisters, matters of her sex would soon have found their
own level.
There was one person who objected strongly to any deviation from the
conventional rule of a girl's education. This was Miss Laetitia Rowly,
who took after a time, in so far as such a place could be taken, that of
the child's mother. Laetitia Rowly was a young aunt of Squire Rowly of
Norwood; the younger sister of his father and some sixteen years his
own senior. When the old Squire's second wife had died, Laetitia, then

a conceded spinster of thirty-six, had taken possession of the young
Margaret. When Margaret had married Squire Norman, Miss Rowly
was well satisfied; for she had known Stephen Norman all her life.
Though she could have wished a younger bridegroom for her darling,
she knew it would be hard to get a better man or one of more suitable
station in life. Also she knew that Margaret loved him, and the woman
who had never found the happiness of mutual love in her own life
found a pleasure in the romance of true love, even when the wooer was
middle-aged. She had been travelling in the Far East when the belated
news of Margaret's death came to her. When she had arrived home she
announced her intention of taking care of Margaret's child, just as she
had taken care of Margaret. For several reasons this could not be done
in the same way. She was not old enough to go and live at
Normanstand without exciting comment; and the Squire absolutely
refused to allow that his daughter should live anywhere except in his
own house. Educational supervision, exercised at such distance and so
intermittently, could neither be complete nor exact.
Though Stephen was a sweet child she was a wilful one, and very early
in life manifested a dominant nature. This was a secret pleasure to her
father, who, never losing sight of his old idea that she was both son and
daughter, took pleasure as well as pride out of each manifestation of her
imperial will. The keen instinct of childhood, which reasons in
feminine fashion, and is therefore doubly effective in a woman-child,
early grasped the possibilities of her own will. She learned the measure
of her nurse's foot and then of her father's; and so, knowing where lay
the bounds of possibility of the achievement of her wishes, she at once
avoided trouble and learned how to make the most of the space within
the limit of her tether.
It is not those who 'cry for the Moon' who go furthest or get most in
this limited world of ours. Stephen's pretty ways and unfailing good
temper were a perpetual joy to her father; and when he found that as a
rule her desires were reasonable, his wish to yield to them became a
habit.
Miss Rowly seldom saw any individual thing to disapprove of. She it

was who selected the governesses and who interviewed them from time
to time as to the child's progress. Not often was there any complaint,
for the little thing had such a pretty way of showing affection, and such
a manifest sense of justified trust in all whom she encountered, that it
would have been hard to name a specific fault.
But though all went in tears of affectionate regret, and with eminently
satisfactory emoluments and references, there came an irregularly
timed succession of governesses.
Stephen's affection for her 'Auntie' was never affected by any of the
changes. Others might come and go, but there no change came. The
child's little hand would steal into one of the old lady's strong ones, or
would clasp a finger and hold it tight. And then the woman who had
never had a child of her own would feel, afresh each time, as though
the child's hand was gripping her heart.
With her father she was sweetest of all. And as he seemed to be pleased
when she did anything like a little boy, the habit of being like one
insensibly grew on her.
An only child has certain educational difficulties. The true learning is
not that which we are taught, but that which we take in for ourselves
from experience and observation, and children's experiences and
observation, especially of things other than repressive, are mainly of
children. The little ones teach each other. Brothers and sisters are more
with each other than are ordinary playmates, and in the familiarity of
their constant intercourse some of the great lessons, so useful in
after-life, are learned. Little