ted on Mrs. Tebrick the old woman talked to her as though she were a
baby, and treated her as such, never thinking perhaps that she was
either the one thing or the other, that is either a lady to whom she
owed respect and who had rational powers exceeding her own, or else a
wild creature on whom words were wasted. But though at first she
submitted passively, Mrs. Tebrick only waited for her Nanny's back to be
turned to tear up her pretty piece of handiwork into shreds, and then
ran gaily about waving her brush with only a few ribands still hanging
from her neck.

So it was time after time (for the old woman was used to having her own
way) until Mrs. Cork would, I think, have tried punishing her if she had
not been afraid of Mrs. Tebrick's rows of white teeth, which she often
showed her, then laughing afterwards, as if to say it was only play.

Not content with tearing off the dresses that were fitted on her, one
day Silvia slipped upstairs to her wardrobe and tore down all her old
dresses and made havoc with them, not sparing her wedding dress either,
but tearing and ripping them all up so that there was hardly a shred or
rag left big enough to dress a doll in. On this, Mr. Tebrick, who had
let the old woman have most of her management to see what she could make
of her, took her back under his own control.

He was sorry enough now that Mrs. Cork had disappointed him in the hopes
he had had of her, to have the old woman, as it were, on his hands. True
she could be useful enough in many ways to him, by doing the housework,
the cooking and mending, but still he was anxious since his secret was
in her keeping, and the more now that she had tried her hand with his
wife and failed. For he saw that vanity had kept her mouth shut if she
had won over her mistress to better ways, and her love for her would
have grown by getting her own way with her. But now that she had failed
she bore her mistress a grudge for not being won over, or at the best
was become indifferent to the business, so that she might very readily
blab.

For the moment all Mr. Tebrick could do was to keep her from going into
Stokoe to the village, where she would meet all her old cronies and
where there were certain to be any number of inquiries about what was
going on at Rylands and so on. But as he saw that it was clearly beyond
his power, however vigilant he might be, to watch over the old woman and
his wife, and to prevent anyone from meeting with either