But Carmina had something to say to him--and Carmina spoke first.
"Has Miss Minerva been your mother's governess for a long time ?" she inquired.
"For some years," Ovid replied.

"Will you let me put a question on my side?
Why do you ask ?" Carmina hesitated--and answered in a whisper, "She looks ill-tempered." "She _is_ ill-tempered," Ovid confessed.

"I suspect," he added with a smile, "you don't like Miss Minerva." Carmina attempted no denial; her excuse was a woman's excuse all over: "She doesn't like _me."_ "How do you know ?" "I have been looking at her.

Does she beat the children ?" "My dear Carmina! do you think she would be my mother's governess if she treated the children in that way?
Besides, Miss Minerva is too well-bred a woman to degrade herself by acts of violence.

Family misfortunes have very materially lowered her position in the world." He was reminded, as he said those words, of the time when Miss Minerva had entered on her present employment, and when she had been the object of some little curiosity on his own part.