governess was an impossible item in Manchester House, as things
went. And so she trudged the country, giving music lessons to the
daughters of tradesmen and of colliers who boasted pianofortes. She
even taught heavy-handed but dauntless colliers, who were seized
with a passion to "play." Miles she trudged, on her round from
village to village: a white-haired woman with a long, quick stride,
a strong figure, and a quick, handsome smile when once her face
awoke behind her gold-rimmed glasses. Like many short-sighted
people, she had a certain intent look of one who goes her own way.
The miners knew her, and entertained the highest respect and
admiration for her. As they streamed in a grimy stream home from
pit, they diverged like some magic dark river from off the pavement
into the horse-way, to give her room as she approached. And the men
who knew her well enough to salute her, by calling her name "Miss
Frost!" giving it the proper intonation of salute, were fussy men
indeed. "She's a lady if ever there was one," they said. And they
meant it. Hearing her name, poor Miss Frost would flash a smile and
a nod from behind her spectacles, but whose black face she smiled to
she never, or rarely knew. If she did chance to get an inkling, then
gladly she called in reply "Mr. Lamb," or "Mr. Calladine." In her
way she was a proud woman, for she was regarded with cordial
respect, touched with veneration, by at least a thousand colliers,
and by perhaps as many colliers' wives. That is something, for any
woman.
Miss Frost charged fifteen shillings for thirteen weeks' lessons,
two lessons a week. And at that she was considered rather dear. She
was supposed to be making money. What money she made went chiefly to
support the Houghton household. In the meanwhile she drilled Alvina
thoroughly in theory and pianoforte practice, for Alvina was
naturally musical, and besides this she imparted to the girl the
elements of a young lady's education, including the drawing of
flowers in water-colour, and the translation of a Lamartine poem.
Now incredible as it may seem, fate threw another prop to the
falling house of Houghton, in the person of the manageress of the
work-girls, Miss Pinnegar. James Houghton complained of Fortune, yet
to what other man would Fortune have sent two such women as Miss
Frost and Miss Pinnegar, _gratis_? Yet there they were. And doubtful
if James was ever grateful for their presence.
If Miss Frost saved him from heaven knows what domestic débâcle and
horror, Miss Pinnegar saved him from the workhouse. Let us not mince
matters. For a dozen years Miss Frost supported the heart-stricken,
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