Chapters (44)
But Miss Lane was still with her and had to be dealt with. Laura expected at least a severe scolding. A letter might even be written to her mother. But when Laura returned to the kitchen Miss Lane, who was carefully ruling a line in red ink, did not even look up. “Who was that?” she asked in a casual tone when she had finished, and Laura, trying to sound casual too, replied: “Sir Timothy’s new gamekeeper.” No more was said at that moment, but, as she folded her accounts and slipped them into the large brown paper envelope with the printed address, “Accountant-General, G.P.O., London,” Miss Lane eyed Laura closely and said: “You seem to know that young man very well,” “Yes,” admitted Laura. “I’ve met him on the round sometimes.” And Miss Lane said, “Umph! So I gathered.”
So there were no reproaches. On the contrary, Miss Lane appeared in a better temper than usual for the rest of the evening. As they were lighting their candles to go up to bed, she said thoughtfully: “I don’t see why you should ever leave here. You and I get on very well together, and perhaps, after my time, you might take my place in the office.”
In after years Laura sometimes looked rather wistfully back on that evening when an apparent choice was offered her between two widely differing paths in life. It would have been pleasant to have lived all her days in comparative ease and security among the people she knew and understood. To have watched the seasons open and fade in the scenes she loved and belonged to by birth. But have we any of us a free choice of our path in life, or are we driven on by destiny or by the demon within us into a path already marked out? Who can tell?
Choice or no choice, Laura’s sojourn at Candleford Green was to be but of a few years’ duration. And, if the choice had been hers and she had remained there, her life might not have been as happy and peaceful as she afterwards imagined it would have been. Her mother’s judgement was usually sound, and she had often told her: “You’re not cut out for a pleasant, easy life. You think too much!” Sometimes adding tolerantly: “But we are as we are made, I suppose.”