But, alas! the art of enjoying youth with a wise economy is only learnt when youth is over.  It is perhaps too paradoxical an accomplishment to be learnt before; for a youth that economised itself would be already middle age.  It is just the wasteful flare of it that leaves such a dazzle in old eyes, as they look back in fancy to the conflagration of fragrant fire which once bourgeoned and sang where these white ashes now slowly smoulder towards extinction.

When Mike has a theatre of his own and can send boxes to his friends, when Henry maybe is an editor of power, when Esther and Angel are the enthroned wives of famous men, and the new heaven and the new earth are quite finished,—­will they never sigh sometimes to have the making of them all over again?  Then they will have everything to enjoy, so there will be nothing left to hope for.  Then there will be no spice of peril in their loves, no keen edge that comes of enforced denial; and the game of life will be too sure for ambition to keep its savour.  “There is no thrill, no excitement nowadays,” one can almost fancy their saying, and, like children playing with their bricks, “Now let us knock it all down, and build another, one.  It will be such fun.”

However, these are intrusive, autumnal thoughts in this book of simple youth, and our young people knew them not.  They were far indeed from Esther’s mind as she talked with Dot of the future one afternoon.  Instead, her words were full of impatience with the slow march of events, and the enforced inactivity of a girl’s life at home.

“It is so much easier for the boys,” she was saying.  “There is something for them to do.  But we can do nothing but sit at home and wait, darn their socks, and clap our hands at their successes.  I wish I were a man!”

“No, you don’t,” said Dot; “for then you couldn’t marry Mike.  And you couldn’t wear pretty dresses—­Oh! and lots of things.  I don’t much envy a man’s life, after all.  It’s all very well talking about hard work when you haven’t got to do it; and it’s not so much the work as the responsibility.  It must be such a responsibility to be a man.”

“Of course you’re right, Dot—­but, oh! this waiting is so stupid, all the same.  If only I could be doing something—­anything!”

“Well, you are doing something.  Is it nothing to be all the world to a man?” said Dot, wistfully; “nothing to be his heaven upon earth?  Nothing to be the prize he is working for, and nothing to sustain and cheer him on, as you do Mike, and as Angel cheers Henry?  Would Henry have been the same without Angel, or Mike the same without you?  No, the man’s work makes more noise, but the woman’s work is none the less real and useful because it is quiet and underground.”

“Dear Dot, what a wise old thing you’re growing!  But you know you’re longing all the time for some work to do yourself.  Didn’t you say the other day that you seemed to be wasting your life here, making beds and doing housework?”