The month of June goes on auspiciously both out-of-doors and in at the Rookery. Besides having brought the rose-trees to a state of perfection, which charms and delights the Mr. Talboys beyond measure, Molly has secured not only one, but two of the retired baker's daughters for music pupils. Indeed, Mrs. Hallam is so charmed with the progress that Violet and Lilian (who are really musical by nature) are making in the hands of their clever little instructress, that she, Molly, is promised the whole family (which is numerous) in succession so soon as each one becomes old enough.
To be sure, Violet and Lilian Hallam give poor Molly a good deal of trouble between them, their tempers being anything but sweet; but she is not a girl to brook the slightest disrespect or impertinence from anyone, much less from a child who is under her own control for the time being. The consequence is, that having found this out for themselves in their very first lesson, and discovered that their usual method of treating their governess is not practicable in Miss Merivale's case, they take it out of each other. On duet days especially they often actually come to blows, and on these occasions the music, it is to be feared, sometimes obtains scant attention; Molly's whole time being taken up in preventing the sisters from doing one another an injury.
Their mother they rule with a rod of iron. The head nurse, who has been with Mrs. Hallam since the birth of her first child, is in a chronic state of giving notice, though she is generally persuaded into staying on by her master and mistress, and yet the young rebels, though such termagants in a general way, have at heart warm and affectionate natures. Not one governess has ever been known to stay beyond the first quarter, so that Mrs. Hallam, coming suddenly into the room one day and seeing her daughters hanging round Molly, to whom they have taken an immense fancy, throws up her hands in amazement.
"I cannot think how you manage them so well, Miss Merivale! You never give way to them, and yet they always seem as docile as lambs with you, and they are so fond of you too! I never can get them to attend to a word _I_ say. Their father is the only one in the house that can manage them."