ad occasionally to pay a stiff bill
for her. But then the 'position'--look at the 'position' and the society.

Georgie, in process of time, went to Scotland, to Paris, the South of
France, to Rome, and Naples. Being a discreet girl, and having a winning
manner, she became as much a companion to her mistress as governess, and
thus saw and heard more of the world than she would otherwise have done.
She saw some very grand people indeed occasionally. After this, after the
Continent, and, above all, London in the season, the annual visit to the
old farmhouse came to be a bitter time of trial. Georgie had come home now
for a few days only, to ask for money, and already before she had scarcely
spoken had rushed upstairs to hide her feeling of repulsion in the privacy
of her room.

Her welcome had been warm, and she knew that under the rude exterior it
was more than warm; but the absence of refinement jarred upon her. It all
seemed so uncouth. She shrank from the homely rooms; the very voice of her
mother, trembling with emotion, shocked her ear, unaccustomed to country
pronunciation. She missed the soft accents of the drawing-room. From her
window she could see nothing but the peaceful fields--the hateful green
trees and hedges, the wheat, and the hateful old hills. How miserable it
was not to be born to Grosvenor Square!

Georgie's case was, of course, exceptional in so far as her 'success' was
concerned. She possessed good natural parts, discretion, and had the
advantage of high-class recommendations. But apart from her 'success,' her
case was not exceptional. The same thing is going on in hundreds of
farmhouses. The daughters from the earliest age are brought up under a
system of education the practical tendency of which is to train their
minds out of the associations of farming. When later on they go out to
teach they are themselves taught by the social surroundings of the
households into which they enter to still more dislike the old-fashioned
ways of agriculture. Take twenty farmers' families, where there are girls,
and out of that twenty fifteen will be found to be preparing for a
scholastic life. The farmer's daughter does not like the shop-counter,
and, as she cannot stay at home, there is nothing left to her but the
profession of governess. Once thoroughly imbued with these 'social' ideas,
and a return to the farm is almost impossible. The result is a continuous
drain of women out of agriculture--of the very women