528 PRÆTERITA-III

children were so: but the fine methods of measurement and delineation were new to all of them; nor less the charm of faithfully represented colour, in full daylight, and in the open air. Having Turner’s mountain drawings of his best time beside us, and any quantity of convolvuluses, holly-hocks, plums, peaches, and apples, to bring in from the garden, the afternoon hours went fast; but so much more in talk than work, that I soon found, if either triangles or bindweeds were to come to anything, it must be under the governess’s superintendence, not mamma’s: and that I should have to make my way to Green Street, and up to the schoolroom, after all, on at least two out of three of the lesson days. Both the children, to my extreme satisfaction, approved of this arrangement, and the final order was that whenever I happened to go through Green Street, I should pay them a visit in the nursery. Somehow, from that time, most of my London avocations led me through Green Street.

It chanced above all things well for me that their governess was a woman of great sense and power, whom the children entirely loved, and under whom mamma put herself, in the schoolroom, no less meekly than they; partly in play, but really also a little subdued by the clear insight of the fearlessly frank preceptress into her own faults. I cannot call them “foibles,” for her native wit and strength of character admitted none.

56. Rosie had shortly expressed her sense of her governess’s niceness by calling her “Bun”; and I had not been long free of the schoolroom before she wanted a name for me also, significant of like approval. After some deliberation, she christened me “Crumpet”; then, impressed by seeing my gentleness to beggars, canonized me as “Saint Crumpet,” or, shortly and practically, “St. C.,”-which I remained ever afterwards; only Emily said one day to her sister that the C. did in truth stand for “Chrysostom.”

The drawing, and very soon painting, lessons went on meantime quite effectively, both the girls working with

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