"And you'll let Fairoaks, of course? Good school in the neighborhood;
cheap country: dev'lish nice place for East India Colonels or families
wanting to retire. I'll speak about it at the club; there are lots of
fellows at the club want a place of that sort."
"I hope Laura will live in it for the winter, at least, and will make
it her home," Arthur replied: at which the major pish'd, and psha'd,
and said that there ought to be convents, begad, for English ladies,
and wished that Miss Bell had not been there to interfere with the
arrangements of the family, and that she would mope herself to death
alone in that place.
Indeed, it would have been a very dismal abode for poor Laura, who was
not too happy either in Doctor Portman's household, and in the town
where too many things reminded her of the dear parent whom she had
lost. But old Lady Rockminster, who adored her young friend Laura, as
soon as she read in the paper of her loss, and of her presence in the
country, rushed over from Baymouth, where the old lady was staying,
and insisted that Laura should remain six months, twelve months, all
her life with her; and to her ladyship's house, Martha from Fairoaks,
as _femme de chambre_, accompanied her young mistress.
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