Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 125: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

108 REYNOLDS’ WORKS poignancy of my affliction at that moment. My boxes were conveyed to the hotel where the family was stopping, but before I took leave of Mr. and Mrs. Jennings I besought them to treat my dear brother with all possible kindness, as I knew that he would be inconsolable at my loss. They promised that they would, and they showed some degree of feeling on parting from me. “The family into which I now entered was that of Sir John Marston. He was then about fifty years of age; Lady Marston was two years his junior. They had a niece with them, a Mrs. Lloyd, who was a widow and had two ehildren. She was about thirty years old, and her children, both girls, were respectively twelve and ten. It was these two children of whose education I was to take charge. As I have already said, this family was staying at a hotel, and from what I learned, they had only arrived from London two days pre- viously. How they heard of me, how I became engaged to enter into their service, how long the negotiation had been carried on, in short, all circumstances leading to my entrance into this family, were totally unknown to me, and of course I did not ask the question. ‘On the following day we embarked on board a steam- packet bound for Havre de Grace, and there I found that the Marstons had a house ready provided to receive them, and where they had previously been dwelling for some time. It was there that we accordingly took up our abode, and I entered upon my duties as governess to Mrs. Lloyd’s children. Under no circumstances is the occupation of a teacher a very pleasurable one, but mine was rendered doubly annoying by the disagreeable temper of my two pupils, and by the difficulty I experienced in giving Mrs. Lloyd satisfaction. She was constantly interfering and finding fault. Her children were rude, pert, and forward when I commenced with them, and vainly did I endeavour to improve- their manners and dispositions. If I spoke harshly to them, they raised such a storm of crying, shrieking, screaming, and yelling that the whole house grew alarmed, and I was blamed for their ill conduct. In short, I soon found that I had entered into a kind of purgatory, and that the life I had led at the Southampton school was paradise compared to it. Sir John Marston often scolded me most brutally. Lady Marston treated me with the supremest contempt; indeed, Gomichbooks