The Farringdons | Page 7

said Elisabeth, one afternoon in the holidays,
when she was twelve and Christopher fifteen; "that's Mrs. Bateson's pig
being killed."
"Hear it?--rather," replied Christopher, standing still in the wood to
listen.
"Let's go and see it," Elisabeth suggested.
Christopher looked shocked. "Well, you are a horrid girl! Nothing
would induce me to go, or to let you go either; but I'm surprised at your
being so horrid as to wish for such a thing."

"It isn't really horridness," Elisabeth explained meekly; "it is interest.
I'm so frightfully interested in things; and I want to see everything, just
to know what it looks like."
"Well, I call it horrid. And, what's more, if you saw it, it would make
you feel ill."
"No; it wouldn't."
"Then it ought to," said Christopher, who, with true masculine dulness
of perception, confounded weakness of nerve with tenderness of heart.
Elisabeth sighed. "Nothing makes me feel ill," she replied
apologetically; "not even an accident or an after-meeting."
Christopher could not help indulging in a certain amount of envious
admiration for an organism that could pass unmoved through such
physical and spiritual crises as these; but he was not going to let
Elisabeth see that he admired her. He considered it "unmanly" to
admire girls.
"Well, you are a rum little cove!" he said.
"Of course, I don't want to go if you think it would be horrid of me; but
I thought we might pretend it was the execution of Mary Queen of
Scots, and find it most awfully exciting."
"How you do go on about Mary Queen of Scots! Not long ago you
were always bothering about heathen goddesses, and now you have no
thought for anything but Mary."
"Oh! but I'm still immensely interested in goddesses, Chris; and I do
wish, when you are doing Latin and Greek at school, you'd find out
what colour Pallas Athene's hair was. Couldn't you?"
"No; I couldn't."
"But you might ask one of the masters. They'd be sure to know."

Christopher laughed the laugh of the scornful. "I say, you are a duffer
to suppose that clever men like schoolmasters bother their heads about
such rot as the colour of a woman's hair."
"Of course, I know they wouldn't about a woman's," Elisabeth hastened
to justify herself; "but I thought perhaps they might about a goddess's."
"It is the same thing. You've no idea what tremendously clever chaps
schoolmasters are--much too clever to take any interest in girls' and
women's concerns. Besides, they are too old for that, too--they are
generally quite thirty."
Elisabeth was silent for a moment; and Christopher whistled as he
looked across the green valley to the sunset, without in the least
knowing how beautiful it was. But Elisabeth knew, for she possessed
an innate knowledge of many things which he would have to learn by
experience. But even she did not yet understand that because the sunset
was beautiful she felt a sudden hunger and thirst after righteousness.
"Chris, do you think it is wicked of people to fall in love?" she asked
suddenly.
"Not exactly wicked; more silly, I should say," replied Chris
generously.
"Because if it is wicked, I shall give up reading tales about it." This was
a tremendous and unnatural sacrifice to principle on the part of
Elisabeth.
Christopher turned upon her sharply. "You don't read tales that Miss
Farringdon hasn't said you may read, do you?"
"Yes; lots. But I never read tales that she has said I mustn't read."
"You oughtn't to read any tale till you have asked her first if you may."
Elisabeth's face fell. "I never thought of doing such a thing as asking
her first. Oh! Chris, you don't really think I ought to, do you? Because

she'd be sure to say no."
"That is exactly why you ought to ask." Christopher's sense of honour
was one of his strong points.
Then Elisabeth lost her temper. "That is you all over! You are the most
tiresome boy to have anything to do with! You are always bothering
about things being wrong, till you make them wrong. Now I hardly
ever think of it; but I can't go on doing things after you've said they are
wrong, because that would be wrong of me, don't you see? And yet it
wasn't a bit wrong of me before I knew. I hate you!"
"I say, Betty, I'm awfully sorry lo have riled you; but you asked me."
"I didn't ask you whether I need ask Cousin Maria, stupid! You know I
didn't. I asked you whether it was wrong to fall in love, and then you
went and dragged Cousin Maria in. I wish I'd never asked you anything;
I wish I'd never spoken to you; I wish I'd got somebody else to play
with, and