Modern Broods

'I'll leave a message,' said Gillian. 'My mother wants you all to come up to picnic tea to see the foxgloves in the dell, on Monday, and to bring Mr. Delrio-'

'Oh! thank you.'

'I forgot, you had not seen my cousin Dolores Mohun before. Mysie calls her a cousin-twin, if you know what that is.'

Agatha thought the newcomer's great pensive dark eyes and overhanging brow under very black hair made her look older than Mysie, or indeed than Gillian herself; and when the message had been disposed of, the latter continued, 'Dolores wanted to know about Miss Arthuret's lecture, being rather in that line herself. She could not get home in time for it, and I was seeing the Kittiwake party on board, and only crept in at the other end of the hall in time for Bessie's faint echoes.'

'I was in the very antipodes,' said Dolores, 'in a haunt of ancient peace, whence they would not let me come away soon enough.'

'And, Agatha, Aunt Jane says she saw you devouring Miss Arthuret with your eyes,' said Gillian.

'It gave one a sense of new life,' said Agatha; and she related again Miss Arthuret's speech, broken only by appreciative questions and comments from Dolores' auditor, to whom, in the true fashion of nineteen, Agatha straightway lost her heart. Dolores, who had seen much more of the outer world than her cousins, and had had besides a deeply felt inward experience which might well render her far more responsive, and able to comprehend the questions working in the girl's mind, and which found expression in, 'I went to St. Robert's only wanting to get my education carried on so that I might be a better governess; but I see now there are much farther on, much greater things to aim at, than I ever thought of.'

'Alps on Alps arise!' said Dolores. 'Yes-till they lose themselves -and where?'

'Miss Merrifield would say in Heaven, by way of the Church.'

'The all things in earth or under the earth rising up in circles of praise to the Cherubim and the Great White Throne,' said Dolores, her dark eyes raised in a moment's contemplation.

'Ah! One knows. But is that thought the one to be brought home to every one, as if they could bear it always? Are not we to do something -something-for the helping people here in this life, not always going on to the other life-'

'Temporal or spiritual?' said Dolores; 'or spiritual through temporal?'

'And our part in helping,' said Agatha.

'There is an immense deal to be thought out,' said Dolores. 'I feel only at the beginning of the questions, and there is study and experience to go to them.'

'You mean what one gets at Oxford?'

'Partly. Thorough-at least, as thorough as one can-of the physical and material nature of things, then of the precedent which then results, also of reasoning.'

'Metaphysical, do you mean, or logical?'

'That comes in; but I was thinking of mathematical in the indirect training of the mind. It all works into needful equipment, and so does actual life.'

'It takes one's breath away.'

'Well, we have begun our training,' said Dolores, with a sweet sad smile. 'At least, I hope so.'

'At St. Robert's, you mean?'

'You have, I think. But I believe my aunt will be expecting us.'

'Oh! And then they talk about modesty and womanliness and retiring! What do you think about all that?'

'That we never shall do any good without it.'

They were interrupted by the hasty rushing up of Paula, who had committed her bicycle to Vera, and came dashing up the steep slope, crying, 'O Nag, Nag, they are going away!'

The announcement was interrupted as she perceived the presence of the visitor, and they rose to meet her, but saw that there were tears in her eyes, and she had rushed up so fast that she was panting and could hardly speak, though she gave her hand, as Agatha, after naming the two cousins, asked, 'Who are going?'

'The Sisters-Sister Mena-' with another overflow of tears which made Dolores and Gillian think they had better retreat and leave her to her sister's consolation; so they took leave hastily, Agatha however, coming as far as their machines, and confiding to them, 'Poor Polly, it is a great blow to her, but I believe it is very good for her.'

'There's stuff in that girl,' said Dolores, as soon as they were out of reach. 'She has the faculty of hearkening as well as of hearing.'

'You would say so if you saw her at a lecture; and she is also gaining power of expressing and reproducing,' said Gillian.

'She will be a power by and by, unless some blight comes across her.'

'Will me, will me, it seems as if we had to do it. Even Mamma, whose ideal was chivalry, Church and home, has to be drawn out to take a certain public part; Aunt Jane, who only wished to live to potter about among neighbours, poor and rich, must needs come out of her traditional conventions, and relate her experiences, and you-'

'Oh, I am only trying to do the work Gerald aimed at!'

'Any way we have our work before us, whether we call it for the Church or mankind.'

'Charity or Altruism,' said Dolores.

'May not altruism lead to charity?' said Gillian.

'Sometimes, but sometimes disappointment leads only to intolerance of those whose methods differ. Altruism will not stand without a foundation,' said Dolores.

'Mysie has been impressing on me, with what she heard from Phyllis Devereux, of the work Sister Angela has been doing at Albertstown-the most utter self-abnegation, through bitter disappointment in her most promising pupils-only the charity that is rooted could endure. It is just the old difference Tennyson points out between Wisdom and Knowledge.'

'And with wisdom come those feminine attributes that Agatha began asking about.'

'Yes, softening, gentleness, tact. If people have not grown up to them, they must be taught as parts of wisdom.'

Gillian sighed. 'I wonder what Ernley Armitage will say when he comes home?'

'He won't want you to throw up everything.'

'I don't think he will! But if he did-No, I think he will be a staff to guide a silly, priggish heart to the deeper wisdom.'

CHAPTER XVII-FOXGLOVES AND FLIRTATIONS

'With her venturous climbings, and tumbles, and childish escapes.'

TENNYSON.

Hubert Delrio, pleased and gratified, but very shy, joined the ladies from the Goyle in their walk to Clipstone, expecting perhaps a good deal of stiffness and constraint, since every one at St. Kenelm's told him what a severe and formidable person Sir Jasper Merrifield was, and that all Lady Merrifield's surroundings were 'so very clever.' 'They did want such books ordered in the library.'

Magdalen laughed, and said her only chance of seeing a book she wanted was that Lady Merrifield should have asked for it. At Clipstone, they were directed to the dell where the foxgloves were unusually fine that year, covering one of the banks of the ravine with a perfect cloud of close-grown spikes, nodding with thick clustered bells, spotted withinside, and without, of that indescribable light crimson or purple, enchanting in reality but impossible to reproduce. It was like a dream of fairy land to Hubert to wander thither with his Vera, count the tiers of bells, admire the rings of purple and the crooked stamens, measure the height of the tall ones, some almost equal to himself in stature, and recall the fairy lore and poetry connected with them, while Vera listened and thought she enjoyed, but kept herself entertained by surreptitiously popping the blossoms, and trying to wreath her hat with wild roses.

Thekla meantime admired from the opposite bank, in a state of much elevation at acquiring a dear delicious brother-in-law, and insisted on Primrose sharing her sentiments till her boasting at last provoked the exclamation, 'I wouldn't be so cocky! I don't make such a fuss if my sisters do go and fall in love. I have two brothers-in-law out in India, and Gillian has a captain, an Egyptian hero, with a medal, a post captain out at sea in the Nivelle. You shall see his photograph coloured in his lovely uniform, with his sword and all! Your Flapsy's man isn't even an officer!'