The Daughters of Danaus | Page 8

his two sisters walked homeward along the banks of the
river, and thence up by a winding path to the top of the cliffs. It was
mild weather, and they decided to pause in the little temple of classic
design, which some ancient owner of the Drumgarran estate, touched
with a desire for the exquisiteness of Greek outline, had built on a
promontory of the rocks, among rounded masses of wild foliage; a spot
that commanded one of the most beautiful reaches of the river. The
scene had something of classic perfection and serenity.
"I admit," said Ernest in response to some remark of one of his sisters,
"I admit that I should not like to stay here during all the best years of
my life, without prospect of widening my experience; only as a matter
of fact, the world is somewhat different from anything that you imagine,
and by no means would you find it all beer and skittles. Your smoke
and sun-vision is not to be trusted."
"But think of the pride and joy of being able to speak in that tone of
experience!" exclaimed Hadria mockingly.
"One has to pay for experience," said Ernest, shaking his head and

ignoring her taunt.
"I think one has to pay more heavily for inexperience," she said.
"Not if one never comes in contact with the world. Girls are protected
from the realities of life so long as they remain at home, and that is
worth something after all."
Algitha snorted. "I don't know what you are pleased to call realities, my
dear Ernest, but I can assure you there are plenty of unpleasant facts, in
this protected life of ours."
"Nobody can expect to escape unpleasant facts," said Ernest.
"Then for heaven's sake, let us purchase with them something worth
having!" Hadria cried.
"Hear, hear!" assented Algitha.
"Unpleasant facts being a foregone conclusion," Hadria added, "the
point to aim at obviously is interesting facts--and plenty of them."
Ernest flicked a pebble off the parapet of the balustrade of the little
temple, and watched it fall, with a silent splash, into the river.
"I never met girls before, who wanted to come out of their
cotton-wool," he observed. "I thought girls loved cotton-wool. They
always seem to."
"Girls seem an astonishing number of things that they are not," said
Hadria, "especially to men. A poor benighted man might as well try to
get on to confidential terms with the Sphinx, as to learn the real
thoughts and wishes of a girl."
"You two are exceptional, you see," said Ernest.
"Oh, everybody's exceptional, if you only knew it!" exclaimed his sister.
"Girls;" she went on to assert, "are stuffed with certain stereotyped
sentiments from their infancy, and when that painful process is

completed, intelligent philosophers come and smile upon the victims,
and point to them as proofs of the intentions of Nature regarding our
sex, admirable examples of the unvarying instincts of the feminine
creature. In fact," Hadria added with a laugh, "it's as if the trainer of
that troop of performing poodles that we saw, the other day, at
Ballochcoil, were to assure the spectators that the amiable animals were
inspired, from birth, by a heaven-implanted yearning to jump through
hoops, and walk about on their hind legs----"
"But there are such things as natural instincts," said Ernest.
"There are such things as acquired tricks," returned Hadria.
A loud shout, accompanied by the barking of several dogs, announced
the approach of the two younger boys. Boys and dogs had been taking
their morning bath in the river.
"You have broken in upon a most interesting discourse," said Ernest.
"Hadria was really coming out."
This led to a general uproar.
When peace was restored, the conversation went on in desultory
fashion. Ernest and Hadria fell apart into a more serious talk. These two
had always been "chums," from the time when they used to play at
building houses of bricks on the nursery floor. There was deep and true
affection between them.
The day broke into splendour, and the warm rays, rounding the edge of
the eastward rock, poured straight into the little temple. Below and
around on the cliff-sides, the rich foliage of holly and dwarf oak, ivy,
and rowan with its burning berries, was transformed into a mass of
warm colour and shining surfaces.
"What always bewilders me," Hadria said, bending over the balustrade
among the ivy, "is the enormous gulf between what might be and what
is in human life. Look at the world--life's most sumptuous stage--and
look at life! The one, splendid, exquisite, varied, generous, rich beyond

description; the other, poor, thin, dull, monotonous, niggard,
distressful--is that necessary?"
"But all lives are not like that," objected Fred.
"I speak only from my own narrow experience," said Hadria.
"Oh, she is thinking,