Dump - a Plain Girl by L.T. Meade

I went home on Tuesday evening. I had no more very specially interesting conversations with Miss Donnithorne; but she gave me during the whole of Monday and all Tuesday, until it was time to put me into the train for my return journey, a right royal time. I can speak of it in no other way. I lived for the first time in my whole existence. She managed to open up the world for me. She did not tell me about the dead and gone great people, who to me were very musty and mouldy and impossible; but she talked of living things -- of birds and beasts and flowers. She was great on flowers. She said the country was the right place to live in, and the town was a very melancholy abode, and not specially good for any one. But then she added, "It is the lot of some girls and some men and women to live in the town, and when it is they must make the best of it."

I began to consider her not only a most agreeable woman, but also a very noble woman.