The Governess

She come to us at Blythe House oh so pretty and la-di-da, saying she’s the new governess like she expected a curtsy from me when she weren’t no grander than a scullery maid who handled children instead of dishes. Evelyn, the christening name. A girl of twenty and waiflike she was, though with a bosom and privately tutored, her daft old father a vicar, and she the forgotten youngest of several. Yet she’s putting on airs and worldliness, saying she’d bin given “supreme authority” by our gentleman Employer, her face flushing at just the mention of his name. Which naming his name seemed to me overfamiliar from a lass such as she from nothingness in Wiltshire. Well, I had seen what she’d not seen in these surroundings, worlds she’d not but imagined; however, I held my tongue and seemed ever-so-glad as she fawned over little Lily, the niece.

“And the little boy, Mrs. Gross,” says she. “Does he look like her? Is he too so very remarkable?”

I was fond of Liam and confessed as much, saying she’d be carried away by the lad.