If I see those gloomy faces any longer, as sure as my name's Garth, I'll give your mother written warning and go back to my friends by the mixed train at twelve forty." Concluding her address of expostulation in those terms, Miss Garth led Norah to the library door, pushed Magdalen into the morning-room, and went on her own way sternly to the regions of the medicine-chest.
In this half-jesting, half-earnest manner she was accustomed to maintain a sort of friendly authority over Mr.Vanstone's daughters, after her proper functions as governess had necessarily come to an end.

Norah, it is needless to say, had long since ceased to be her pupil; and Magdalen had, by this time, completed her education.

But Miss Garth had lived too long and too intimately under Mr.Vanstone's roof to be parted with for any purely formal considerations; and the first hint at going away which she had thought it her duty to drop was dismissed with such affectionate warmth of protest that she never repeated it again, except in jest.

The entire management of the household was, from that time forth, left in her hands; and to those duties she was free to add what companionable assistance she could render to Norah's reading, and what friendly superintendence she could still exercise over Magdalen's music.

Such were the terms on which Miss Garth was now a resident in Mr.Vanstone's family.
Toward the afternoon the weather improved.