Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. LUCY JANE. Lucy Jane was a very lively girl, full of animation and vivacity, and very little accustomed to obey any superior authority. Her mother in fact had not trained her to the habit of obeying authority and law, but had
managed her by manoeuvres and artifices of various kinds. She was older than Luly, and though not much larger was stronger and more active; and as she was venturesome and impetuous she was continually getting into mischief. When she was quite a little child, Bridget, the servant-girl, who had been blacking the stove, was called out of the room a moment, and Lucy Jane took it into her head to go on with the work, and as the stove was nearly finished she went to blacking the table and the chairs. Her mother punished her pretty severely for this; but she ought not to have beenpunished at all for it, since she had no reason to suppose that she was doing anything wrong. She was only trying to do what she saw other people do. Very likely she thought she was really helping Bridget in her work. Mrs. Gay allowed Lucy Jane to do as she pleased during the afternoon of the day on which she arrived, but the next morning at breakfast she put both her and Luly under Mary’s special charge.
I give Mary the care of you, said she.
If you wish for anything go and ask her for it. If she can give it to you, and thinks it is right to do so, she will. If there is any doubt about it she will come to me. You must not come to me to ask for anything, but go to her, and if it is necessary she will come to me.
If you wish to go anywhere or to do anything that you are not sure about, you must ask her. And if she directs you to do anything, or not to do anything that you were going to do, you must consider her words as a command, and obey it, just as…
