Harriet's was the very first breathing against her mother's
character that Ida had ever heard. Lotty had invented fables, for
the child's amusement, about her own earlier days. The legend was,
that her husband had died about a year after marriage. Of course Ida
implicitly believed all this. Her mind contained pictures of a
beautiful little house just outside London in which her mother had
once lived, and her imagination busied itself with the time when
they would both live in just that same way. She was going to be a
teacher, so it had been decided in confidential chats, and would one
day have a school of her own. In such a future Lotty herself really
believed. The child seemed to her extraordinarily clover, and in
four more years she would be as old as a girl who had assisted with
the little ones in the first school she went to. Lotty was
ambitious. Offers of Mrs. Ledward to teach Ida dressmaking, she had
put aside; it was not good enough.

Yet Ida was not in reality remarkable either for industry or
quickness in learning. At both schools she had frequently to be
dealt with somewhat severely. Ability she showed from time to time,
but in application she was sadly lacking. Books were distasteful to
her, more even than to most children; she learned sometimes by
listening to the teacher, but seldom the lessons given her to
prepare. At home there were no books to tempt her to read for
herself; her mother never read, and would not have known how to set
about giving her child a love for such occupation, even had she
deemed it needful. And yet Ida always seemed to have abundance to
think about; she would sit by herself for hours, without any
childlike employment, and still not seem weary. When asked what her
thoughts ran upon, she could not give very satisfactory answers; she
was always rather slow in expressing herself, and never chattered,