"Easily; but you'll have to conquer the horror of the elders."

"I know. They think one must learn atheism and all sorts of things there."

"You might go in for physical science at Oxford or Cambridge."

"I expect that is all my father would allow. In spite of the colonies, he has all the old notions about women, and would do nothing Aunt Lily really protested against."

"You are lucky to have a definite plan and notion to work for. Now fate was so unkind as to make me a country squire, and not only that, but one bound down, like Gulliver among the Liliputians, with all manner of cords by all the dear good excellent folks, who look on that old mediaeval den with a kind of fetish-worship, sprung of their having been kept out of it so long, and it would be an utter smash of all their hearts if I uttered a profane word against it. I would as soon be an ancient Egyptian drowning a cat as move a stone of it. It is a lovely sort of ancient Pompeii, good to look at now and then, but not to be bound down to."

"Like Beechcroft Court, a fossil. It is very well there are such places."

"Yes, but not to be the hope of them. It is my luck. If my eldest uncle, who had toiled in a bookseller's shop all his youth and reigned like a little king, had not gone and got killed in a boating accident, there he would be the ruling Sir Roger de Coverley of the county, a pillar of Church and State, and I should be a free man."

"Won't they let you go about, and see everything?"

"Oh yes, I am welcome to do a little globe-trotting. They are no fools; if they were I should not care half so much; but wherever I went, there would be a series of jerks from my string, and not having an integument of rhinoceros hide, I could not disregard them without a sore more raw than I care to carry about. After all, it is only a globe, and one gets back to the same place again."

"Men have so many openings."

"I'm not rich enough for Parliament, and if I were, maybe it would be worse for their hearts," he said, with a sigh.

"There's journalism, a great power."

"Yes, but to put my name to all I could--and long to say--would be an equal horror to the dear folks."

"Yet you are helping on this concern."

"True, but partly pour pa.s.ser le temps, partly because I really want to hear 'The Outlaws Isle' performed, and all under protest that the windmill will soon be swept away by the stream."

"Indeed, yes," cried Dolores. "They hope to regulate the stream. They might as well hope to regulate Mississippi."

"Well-chosen simile! The current is slow and sluggish, but irresistible."

"Better than stagnating or sticking fast in the mud."

"Though the mud may be full of fair blossoms and sweet survivals," said Gerald sadly.

"Oh yes, people in the old grooves are delightful," said Dolores, "but one can't live, like them, with a heart in G. F. S., like my Aunt Jane, really the cleverest of any of us! Or like Mysie, not stupid, but wrapped up in her cla.s.ses, just scratching the surface. Now, if I went in for good works I would go to the bottom--down to the slums."

"Slums are one's chief interest," said Gerald; "but no doubt it will soon be the same story over and over, and only make one wish--"

"What?"

"That there could be a revolution before I am of age."

"What's that?" cried Primrose, coming up as he spoke. "A revolution?"

"Yes, guillotines and all, to cut off your head in Rotherwood Park,"

said Gerald lightly.

"Oh! you don't really mean it."

"Not that sort," said Dolores. "Only the coming of the coquecigrues."

"They are in 'The Water Babies'," said Primrose, mystified.

Each of those two liked to talk to the other as a sort of fellow-captive, solacing themselves with discussions over the 'Censor'

and its fellows. Love is not often the first thought, even where it lurks in modern intellectual intercourse between man and maid; and though Kitty Varley might giggle, the others thought the idea only worthy of her. Aunt Jane, however, smelt out the notion, and could not but communicate it to her sister, though adding--

"I don't believe in it: Dolores is in love with Physiology, and the boy with what Jasper calls Socialist maggots, but not with each other, unless they work round in some queer fashion."

However, Lady Merrifield, feeling herself accountable for Dolores, was anxious to gather ideas about Gerald from his aunt, with whom she was becoming more and more intimate. She was more than twenty years the senior, and the thread of connection was very slender, but they suited one another so well that they had become Lilias and Geraldine to one another. Lady Merrifield had preserved her youthfulness chiefly from having had a happy home, unbroken by family sorrows or carking cares, and with a husband who had always taken his full share of responsibility.

"Your nephew's production has made a stir," said she, when they found themselves alone together.

"Yes, poor boy." Then answering the tone rather than the words, "I suppose it is the lot of one generation to be startled by the next.

There is a good deal of change in the outlook."

"Yes," said Lady Merrifield. "The young ones, especially the youngest, seem to have a set of notions of their own that I cannot always follow."

"Exactly," said Geraldine eagerly.

"You feel the same? To begin with, the laws of young ladyhood--maidenliness--are a good deal relaxed--"

"There I am not much of a judge. I never had any young ladyhood, but I own that the few times I went out with Anna I have been surprised, and more surprised at what I heard from her sister Emily."

"What we should have thought simply shocking being tolerated now."

"Just so; and we are viewed as old duennas for not liking it. I should say, however, that it is not, or has not, been a personal trouble with me. Anna's pa.s.sion is for her Uncle Clement, and she has given up the season on his account, though Lady Travis Underwood was most anxious to have her; and as to Emily, though she is obliged to go out sometimes, she hates it, and has a soul set on slums and nursing."

"You mean that the style of gaieties revolts a nice-minded girl?"

"Partly. Perhaps such as the Travis Underwoods used to take part in, rather against their own likings, poor things, are much less restrained for the young people than what would come in your daughters' way."

"Perhaps; though Lady Rotherwood has once or twice in country-houses had to protect her daughter, to the great disgust of the other young people.

That is one development that it is hard to meet, for it is difficult to know where old-fashioned distaste is the motive, and where the real principle of modesty. Though to me the question is made easy, for Sir Jasper would never hear of cricket for his daughters, scarcely of hunting, and we have taken away Valetta and Primrose from the dancing-cla.s.ses since skirt-dancing has come in; but I fear Val thinks it hard."

"Such things puzzle my sisters at Vale Leston. They are part of the same spirit of independence that sends girls to hospitals or medical schools."

"Or colleges, or lecturing. Dolores is wild to lecture, and I see no harm in her trying her wings at the High School on some safe subject, if her father in New Zealand does not object, though I am glad it has not occurred to any of my own girls."

"Sir Jasper would not like it?"

"Certainly not; but if my brother consents he will not mind it for Dolores. She is a good girl in the main, but even mine have very different ideals from what we had."

"Please tell me. I see it a little, and I have been thinking about it."

"Well, perhaps you will laugh, but my ideal work was Sunday-schools."