"She is getting too clever for me," his wife said to him, after one
of Jane's historical flights, "but I am so glad that she will be a
companion to you."
Lethbury groaned in spirit. He did not look forward to Jane's
companionship. She was still a good little girl: but there was
something automatic and formal in her goodness, as though it were a
kind of moral calisthenics that she went through for the sake of
showing her agility. An early consciousness of virtue had moreover
constituted her the natural guardian and adviser of her elders.
Before she was fifteen she had set about reforming the household.
She took Mrs. Lethbury in hand first; then she extended her efforts
to the servants, with consequences more disastrous to the domestic
harmony; and lastly she applied herself to Lethbury. She proved to
him by statistics that he smoked too much, and that it was injurious
to the optic nerve to read in bed. She took him to task for not
going to church more regularly, and pointed out to him the evils of
desultory reading. She suggested that a regular course of study
encourages mental concentration, and hinted that inconsecutiveness
of thought is a sign of approaching age.
To her adopted mother her suggestions were equally pertinent. She
instructed Mrs. Lethbury in an improved way of making beef stock,
and called her attention to the unhygienic qualities of carpets. She
poured out distracting facts about bacilli and vegetable mould, and
demonstrated that curtains and picture-frames are a hot-bed of
animal organisms.
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