"Go, go, children!" said he; "run away to your gardens! I cannot spare you any more play to-day."

"Oh, but uncle, we want to ask you a question."

"Well, ask it."

"But it is a secret. You must come into the corner with f.a.n.n.y, and Mary, and me."

For peace and quiet he went into the corner with them, and they whispered into each ear a question, how many burnt almonds and gingerbread-b.u.t.tons, and how much barley-sugar, two shillings and threepence halfpenny would buy? The cowslips were now ready to make tea of, and the feast on the dolls' dishes might be served any day. Mr Enderby promised to inquire at the confectioner's, and not to tell anybody else; and at last the children were got rid of.

"Now that we have done with mysteries," said he, as he resumed his seat by the window, "that is, with children's mysteries that we can see to the bottom of, let us look a little into the poet's mysteries. What were you reading? Show me, and I will be your reader. Who or what is this Heavenly Beauty? We have not done with mysteries yet, I see."

"I was wondering," said Margaret smiling, "whether you take up Spenser because you are tired of mysteries. In such a case, some other poet might suit you better."

"What other?"

"Some one less allegorical, at least."

"I do not know that," said Hester. "The most cunning allegory that ever was devised is plain and easy in comparison with the simplest true story,--fully told: and a man is a poet in proportion as he fully tells a simple true story."

"A story of the mind, you mean," said Mr Enderby, "not of the mere events of life?"

"Of the mind, of course, I mean. Without the mind the mere life is nothing."

"Is not allegory a very pretty way of telling such a story of the mind, under the appearance of telling a story of a life?"

"Yes," said Margaret; "and that is the reason why so many like allegory.

There is a pleasure in making one's way about a grotto in a garden; but I think there is a much higher one in exploring a cave on the sea-sh.o.r.e, dim and winding, where you never know that you have come to the end,--a much higher pleasure in exploring a life than following out an allegory."

"You are a true lover of mystery, Miss Margaret. You should have lived a thousand years ago."

"Thank you: I am very glad I did not. But why so long ago? Are there not mysteries enough left?"

"And will there not be enough a thousand years hence?" said Hester.

"I am afraid not. You and I cannot venture to speak upon what the Germans may be doing. But these two ladies can tell us, perhaps, whether they are not clearing everything up very fast;--making windows in your cave, Miss Margaret, till n.o.body will be afraid to look into every cranny of it."

"And then our complaint," said Miss Young, "will be like Mrs Howell's, when somebody told her that we were to have the Drummond light on every church steeple. 'Oh dear, ma'am!' said she, 'we shall not know how in the world to get any darkness.'"

"You speak as if you agreed that the Germans really are the makers of windows that Mr Enderby supposes them," observed Margaret; "but you do not think we are any nearer the end of mysteries than ever, do you?"

"Oh, no; not till we have struck our stone to the bottom of the universe, and walked round it: and I am not aware that the Germans pretend to be able to do that, any more than other people. Indeed, I think there are as many makers of grottoes as explorers of caves among them. What do you want, my dear?"

This last was addressed to George, whose round face, red with exertion, appeared at a back window. The little girls were hoisting him up, that he might call out once more, "Uncle Philip, be sure you remember not to tell."

"It would be a pity that mysteries should come to an end," observed Mr Enderby, "when they seem to please our human tastes so well. See there, how early the love of mystery begins! and who can tell where it ends?

Is there one of your pupils, Miss Young, in whom you do not find it?"

"Not one; but is there not a wide difference between the love of making mysteries, and a taste for finding them out?"

"Do you not find both in children, and up into old age?"

"In children, one usually finds both: but I think the love of mystery-making and surprises goes off as people grow wiser. f.a.n.n.y and Mary were plotting all last week how to take their sister Sophia by surprise with a piece of India-rubber, a token of fraternal affection, as they were pleased to call it; and you see George has a secret to-day: but they will have fewer hidings and devices every year: and, if they grow really wise, they will find that, amidst the actual business of life, there is so much more safety, and ease, and blessing in perfect frankness than in any kind of concealment, that they will give themselves the liberty and peace of being open as the daylight. Such is my hope for them. But all this need not prevent their delighting in the mysteries which are not of man's making."

"They will be all the more at leisure for them," said Margaret, "from having their minds free from plots and secrets."

"Surely you are rather hard upon arts and devices," said Philip.

"Without more or fewer of them, we should make our world into a Palace of Truth,--see the Veillees du Chateau, which Matilda is reading with Miss Young. Who ever read it, that did not think the Palace of Truth the most disagreeable place in the world?"

"And why?" asked Margaret. "Not because the people in it spoke truth; but because the truth which they spoke was hatred, and malice, and selfishness."

"And how much better," inquired Hester, "is the truth that we should speak, if we were as true as the daylight? I hope we shall always be allowed to make mysteries of our own selfish and unkind fancies. There would be little mutual respect left if these things were told."

"I think there would be more than ever," said Margaret, carefully avoiding to meet her sister's eye. "I think so many mistakes would be explained, so many false impressions set right, on the instant of their being made, that our mutual relations would go on more harmoniously than now."

"And what would you do with the affairs now dedicated to mystery?" asked Mr Enderby. "How would you deal with diplomacy, and government, and with courtship? You surely would not overthrow the whole art of wooing?

You would not doom lovers' plots and devices?"

The ladies were all silent. Mr Enderby, however, was determined to have an answer. He addressed himself particularly to Margaret.

"You do not disapprove of the little hidden tokens with which a man may make his feelings secretly known where he wishes them to be understood;--tokens which may meet the eye of one alone, and carry no meaning to any other! You do not disapprove of a more gentle and mysterious way of saying, 'I love you,' than looking full in one another's face, and declaiming it like a Quaker upon affirmation? You do not disapprove--"

"As for disapproving," said Margaret, who chanced to perceive that Maria's hand shook so that she could not guide her needle, and that she was therefore apparently searching for something in her work-box,--"as for disapproving, I do not pretend to judge for other people--"

She stopped short, struck with the blunder she had made. Mr Enderby hastened to take advantage of it. He said, laughing:

"Well, then, speak for yourself. Never mind other people's case."

"What I mean," said Margaret, with grave simplicity, "is, that all depends upon the person whose regard is to be won. There are silly girls, and weak women, who, liking mysteries in other affairs, are best pleased to be wooed with small artifices;--with having their vanity and their curiosity piqued with sly compliments--"

"Sly compliments! What an expression!"

"Such women agree, as a matter of course, in the old notion,--suitable enough five centuries ago,--that the life of courtship should be as unlike as possible to married life. But I certainly think those much the wisest and the happiest, who look upon the whole affair as the solemn matter that it really is, and who desire to be treated, from the beginning, with the sincerity and seriousness which they will require after they are married."

"If the same simplicity and seriousness were common in this as are required in other grave transactions," said Hester, "there would be less of the treachery, delusion, and heart-breaking, which lie heavy upon the souls of many a man and many a woman."

Mr Enderby, happening to be looking out of the window here, as if for something to say, caught the eye of his sister, who was walking in her garden. She beckoned to him, but he took no notice, not desiring to be disturbed at present. Turning again to Margaret, he said:

"But you would destroy all the graces of courtship: you would--"

"Nay," said Hester, "what is so graceful as the simplicity of entire mutual trust?--the more entire the more graceful."

"I wish you had left out the word 'trust.' You have spoiled something that I was going on to say about the simplicity of drawing lots like the Moravians,--the most sincere courtship of all: but that word 'trust'

puts my ill.u.s.tration aside. You need not protest. I a.s.sure you I am not so dull as not to understand that you think love necessary to the wooing which seems graceful in your eyes;--Oh, yes: love, and mutual knowledge, and mutual reverence, and perfect trust! Oh, yes, I understand it all."

"Philip!" cried a soft, sentimental voice under the window:

"Brother, I want your arm for a turn in the shrubbery."

Mrs Rowland's bonnet was visible as she looked up to the window. She saw the braids of the hair of the young ladies, and her voice was rather less soft as she called again, "Philip, do you hear? I want you."