therefore take to teaching as "genteel," and as being rather an elevation
than not from the class in which they were born. Obliged to work,
though they would probably rather be idle, they consider governessing
the easiest kind of work, and use it only as a means to an end which, if
they have pretty faces and tolerable manners, is--human nature being
weak, and life only too hard, poor girls!--most probably matrimony.

But governesses, pursuing their calling on this principle, are the dead-
weight which drags down their whole class. Half educated, lazy,
unconscientious, with neither the working faculty of a common servant,
nor the tastes and feelings of a lady, they do harm wherever they go;
they neither win respect nor deserve it; and the best thing that could
befall them would be to be swept down, by hundreds, a step lower in
the scale of society--made to use their hands instead of their heads, or,
at any rate, to learn themselves instead of attempting to teach others.

Christian--who, though chiefly self-taught, except in music, was a well-
educated woman, and a most conscientious teacher--had been caused a
world of trouble in undoing what her predecessor had done; and in the
few times that the little Fergusons had met in the street their former
instructress, who was a very good-looking and showy girl, she had not
been too favorably impressed with Miss Bennett. But when she saw
her coming out of the Lodge door, rather shabbier than beforetime, the
March wind whistling through her thin, tawdry shawl, and making her
pretty face look pinched and blue, Mrs. Grey, contrasting the comforts
of her own life with that of the poor governess, felt compassionately
towards her so much so, that, though wondering what could possibly be
her business at the Lodge, she assumed the mistress's kindly part, and
bowed to her in passing which Miss Bennett was in too great a hurry
either to notice or return.