character.

'Don't you think it would be better if we made a beginning this
morning?' she said, as soon as another pause in the flow of chatter gave
her opportunity.

'What a one you are for work!' Jessie protested. 'You seem to take to it
naturally, and yet I'm sure it isn't a natural thing. Just think of
having to muddle over French grammar at my age! And I know very well it
'll never come to anything. Can you imagine me teaching? I always hated
school, and I hate the thought of being a governess. It's different with
you; you're right down clever, and you make people take an interest in
you. But just think of me! Why I should be thought no more of than a
servant. I suppose I should have to make friends with the milkman and
the butcher's boy; I don't see who else I should have to talk to. How's
a girl to get married if she spends all her time in a nursery teaching
children grammar? You don't seem to care whether you're ever married or
not, but I do, and it's precious hard to have all my chances taken away.

This was Jessie's incessant preoccupation; she could not talk for five
minutes without returning to it. Herein she only exaggerated her
sisters' habits of mind. The girls had begun to talk of 'sweethearts'
and husbands before they were well out of the nursery. In earlier years
Emily had only laughed at what she called such foolishness; she could
not laugh now. Such ways of thinking and speaking were a profanation of
all she held holiest; words which she whispered in trembling to her
heart were vulgarised and defiled by use upon these tinkling tongues; it
was blasphemy against her religion.

Once more she endeavoured to fix the girl's thoughts on the work in
hand, and by steady persistence conquered at length some semblance of
attention. But an hour proved the utmost limit of Jessie's patience,
then her tongue got its way again, and the inevitable subjects were
resumed. She talked of the 'gentlemen' whose acquaintance, in a greater
or less degree, she had made at the seaside; described their manoeuvres
to obtain private interviews with her, repeated jokes of their
invention, specified her favourites, all at headlong speed of disjointed
narrative. Emily sat beneath the infliction, feeling that to go through
this on alternate days for some weeks would be beyond her power. She
would not rise and depart, for a gathering warmth within encouraged her
to await a moment when speech would come to her aid. It did so at
len